Booker Stadium Anyone?
 

I'm sure the neighbours who have been complaining about the airfield will love the disturbance from the crowds on match days

Robin
 

You are quite correct about the destubance to tha locals, it is slowly dawning on them how little trouble comes from WAP.

Due to both WW & Wasps using the ground the traffic on the weekends will be a major problem.

Perhaps all the flying clubs can de-camp to Benson when the RAF gets axed in the defence cuts that are being widely reported.

The only up side to the football stadium would be the chairperson of the WAP anti noise group would find her rural cottage placed next to a huge stadium.............. real justice me thinks!

Found amongst the FAQs of the proposed stadiums website...........

I note the word "could"

Benson
 

Benson would be a great site for Booker Gliding Club. Nice long winch run, lots of hangars and better airspace. Ideal for vintage, racing,ridge soaring... roll on defence cuts?
bb

Having already committed £750,000 to a site/feasibility study, Wycombe District Council has now embarked on a public consultaion process on potential options. The rugby club has simply gone public on its preference - but they won't be paying for it (estimates in excess of £100M).

Wycombe air park under threat? what else is new?
 

Wycombe District Council would like to put stadium, parking, and airfield in one place, and a rugby and footie stadium would include "co-location of the Air Park for continued aviation".

I sure would like to see their plans! Meanwhile they just keep hoicking up the rent. After all, only wealthy people fly helicopters etc. etc.

With the looming financial crisis for councils as their budgets are slashed I would Imagine all airfields will be experiencing rises in council taxes and also rents if the council own the land.

I think that this will be enough to drive some businesses under over the next few years.:sad:

From the plans I've seen I'd be concerned that licensed flying could continue as some of the stadium structure seems very close and a potential infringement of OLSs.

However, with planned housing development right up to the boundary I wonder if any developer would be interested a few Flying Homestead type homes?

No, I didn't think so.

Sir George Cayley

From The Other Place:

As said, the only thing that has changed in the last couple of days is that the owner of Wasps and Wanderers has expressed a preference to developing part of Wycombe Air Park into a sports complex etc. The final decision as to which of 19 possible sites is potentially developed is down to Wycombe District Council (the actual land owners) and that is planned for some time in the New Year – then they just need to find the funding.

The parent company of the airfield operator is more than happy to work alongside the developers if Wycombe Air Park were chosen. The realignment of the runway would actually enable a longer runway to exist which would have the added benefit of moving the approach and climb out away from the existing residential areas. This company is in the hotel business and welcomes the idea of a hotel on the airfield which would provide a service to GA using the airfield as well as the sports complex.

At the end of the day, it’s all a long way off and if it actually stops raining we could all go flying!

[ FLYER Forums; Booker - the future ]

:suspect:

Make no mistake, this is a done deal and the stadium will be going onto WAP. The other sites are just a smokescreen to make it seem like the council has done some level of due diligence.

Quite how you'd fit a stadium, "sports village", hotel, runway and hangars on the site, I have no idea. Hayes, Arora and the council have had this one sewn up for a while. All for a 25,000 seater stadium for 5,000 Wycombe fans to sit in. (Maybe a few more from London..)

The initial financial analysis (Leaving Facebook... | Facebook)

shows that likely costs for the development of the proposed stadium are in excess of £100M and that both the football and rugby clubs have been loss making for the past five years.

Be interesting to see how the council will justify committing to such a high risk/low return scheme that appears to benefit only the club owner.

Adams Park isn't all that old (30 years?) as footie stadiums go and it's a nice modern stadium. The old WW stadium was derelict for many years after WW moved (may still be for all I know - haven't been there for years). So why do they really want a new stadium?

To get rid of the aeroplanes, of course. Envy of those who can afford to buy helicopters or twin engine private planes. Noisy and polluting, sort of like fox-hunting, favoured by toffs. As opposed to Russian oligarchs who can afford to buy football teams and get the District Council to splash out on a stadium....hotel.....sports centre, etc. Of course if greenbelt land is freed up to build houses, somebody will make money out of it, especially with M40 access to London.

Fortunately one of the covenants when the land was tranferred to the Air Ministry (now MoD) was that if at any point the airfield ceased to operate as an airfield then the land would revert to agricultural use. .......So, no stadium, houses, spports village, etc.

Wycombe/Booker survival
 

The rot is already settling in (a little premature!) - we've got Booker people looking here (Fairoaks) or at White Waltham, but we're in a bit of a pickle too not knowing what's going on with this place long term.

It's very sad, the tide of property development potential is forever knocking at the door of these sites.

I'm afraid the covenents mentioned are not worth the paper they are written on. A good QC will sort that minor hurdle out. The current Wycombe Air Park site will be flattened and there may be an option to replace some facilities at the other side of the airfield, but the costs will never stack up.

Bad Bear: the glidng club at Booker has been aero tow/slmg only for over 40 years now; winch launching was ditched years ago.

Green belt? Beginning to wonder if that has any meaning these days with all the monstrosities being built in and around the South Bucks area.

I used to have a business that was based around land development and saw how the system worked first hand for years. There is so much money to be made here by so many people and so many 'sweetners' within this sector that I would say this is a done deal.

If I had any kind of business based at the airfield I would be looking for alternative premises. Unfortunately the only people that would support the airfield would be the users and maybe a few locals who realise that a stadium would cause many more problems than the airfield does.

People are obsessed with their house prices and have been brainwashed into thinking that aircraft flying overhead has a negative affect on them, they will vote for the stdium without thinking. The whole process will be dragged out to make it look like some kind of consultation has taken place but this will have been signed and sealed long ago either on a golf course or in a resteraunt somewhere. Anyone that stands in the way may well find themselves out of a job. The people that let it happen will probably be promoted and have a conference suite in the hotel named after them. Its just the way it works im afraid.

I was involved in the running of Chilterns GC at RAF Benson from 1963 until we moved to RAF Abingdon at the beginning of 1971. We had a very close liaison with the club at Booker, particularly when Norman Smith was CFI.

We used to get some Booker chaps down for the weekend to give them some experience in winch launching before they went on their instructor's courses never having done a winch launch before.

I know that Chilterns winch-launched from Booker when the club was formed there in 1958 before moving to Benson around 1960. However, I suspect that the civilian club at Booker has always used aerotows.