City have lined up fresh talks with Bradford Council to see how they fit in with the Odsal Sporting Village.
The club are keeping close tabs on the ambitious development scheme as a fall-back if they cannot strike a deal with Gordon Gibb over Valley Parade.
Town hall will decide tomorrow whether to go with the preferred £75million or £57million projects that are left on the table. City have scheduled more discussions with officials for next week when the dust has settled.
Buying back Valley Parade from the former chairman’s family pension fund is City’s top priority and they have reopened lines of communication with Gibb.
But with the constant cash drain from paying the 25-year lease on the stadium, the option of a ground-share with the Bulls in a brand new Odsal remains firmly on the agenda.
City’s head of operations David Baldwin will meet with senior council officials on June 9.
He said: “At the moment they are still talking about the whole capital cost. We’re not involved with that discussion at all apart from if we were to go there what criteria of stadium we’d need to have, bearing on which project they go with.
“We’ve been kept very much in the loop as to what the council’s proposals are and what options they have on the stadium and the outlying area.
“The ball is back in their court in order to put together some costings as to what the implications of Bradford City being there would be and how much we’d have to pay.
“Once we’ve got that information we can evaluate which is the most cost effective way forward.
“But that doesn’t mean that we’re not exploring the situation with regard to ownership of the stadium here at Valley Parade.”
City have always insisted that uprooting to Odsal – which could be up and running in 2011 – is more than a sabre-rattling exercise to Gibb, whose family bought the ground for £2.5million in 2004.
Baldwin said: “We’ve outlined to Gordon Gibb what the options are to us and obviously asked the question about Valley Parade. We had a reply back that was basically asking what proposal we would make.
“We’ve gone back with an offer, based on valuations we’ve been given and obviously the current market place and now we’re waiting for a response on that. Once we’ve got that, we can make a more informed judgement.”
City are aware of the strength of feeling that upping sticks from Valley Parade would cause and canvassed supporter opinion with several open forums before home games last season.
Baldwin said: “The fans’ feeling is my feeling. The Coral Windows Stadium at Valley Parade is our home and nobody wants to leave their home if they don’t have to.
“But if you can’t afford to live in your house and it’s about sustaining yourself as a business in the long term, then you have to consider any option presented to you that’s way beyond the one you currently have.
“That’s the position we have with the council and the Odsal project. They know our stance on it and our motivations behind it.
“If someone told us we could stay here for nothing then there wouldn’t be a question at all.
“But economics dictate this is a very expensive place to be and we are, when all’s said and done, a League Two team. As such, the incomes we receive are very much League Two distributions.”
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