St Johnstone chairman Geoff Brown has hit back at criticism of his purported role in a planned £13 million roads improvement scheme in Perth.
The transport scheme will link the A85 Crieff Road at Perth Crematorium with a grade-separated junction on the A9, but the Saints supremo claims he and other club directors will not ”get a penny” from the plan.
Saints’ North Stand may be demolished to allow the new transport scheme, but Mr Brown said any ”benefits” from the development will be ploughed back into St Johnstone FC, which he regards as a ”community facility”.
Halcrow Group Ltd, acting as the local authority’s consultants, have lodged the plans with Perth and Kinross Council. The move could spell the end of the North Stand at McDiarmid Park, but could result in around 4,000 homes being built.
Mr Brown, who also owns GS Brown Construction Ltd, has stated that even if the stand does get demolished it will not pose a problem for the Perth club.
Several people who live near McDiarmid Park and Perth Crematorium are unhappy with the proposals, claiming the only person to benefit from them would be chairman Mr Brown.
Yvonne Kildae (43), of Greig Place, said the application should be rejected on legal grounds, lack of information, inaccurate data and incomplete environmental assessments.
She has been instrumental in setting up a Facebook page on which opponents of the proposal can voice their thoughts.
A total of 29 objections have been lodged with the local authority opposing the move.
However, Mr Brown contacted The Courier as he feels the assertions raised by Ms Kildae are ”absurd,” and said he wanted to set the record straight.
”The £13 million road scheme to which Mrs Kildae refers is being promoted by Perth and Kinross Council not by me to facilitate development adjacent to the Crieff Road and in the Almond Valley beyond the bypass in a way that is most compatible with the existing road infrastructure,” he said.
”The proposal which is the subject of the planning application is one of several options being drawn up by the council and their consultants, Halcrow, and in their judgment it is the one that best serves the council’s planning objectives for the area.”
He summarised the involvement of St Johnstone FC in the proposal.
”St Johnstone FC own only a very small part of the area under construction, but we are co-operating to the extent necessary to enable a section of the proposed road to pass through our land, and this will involve sacrificing some of it for the solum of the road and the North Stand part of which may be reconstructed once the land requirements are more accurately known.”
”None of the club’s land will be developed in the sense of providing housing or any other use ‘on-site’, and any benefit to the club will arise from the normal payments due from the uplift in value of adjacent land as it is developed.
”Any financial benefits will flow directly, and only, to the football club, which is in my view a community facility. Neither I nor any of the club directors will receive a single penny from any benefits which accrue. All the receipts will be used purely to improve the club and its facilities.
”Neither I, nor GS Brown Construction Ltd, have a stake in any of the proposed development land outwith the boundaries I have referred to and we are not, as Ms Kildae puts it, ‘guaranteed an interest in the proposed new development.’
”Her comments are, in short, nothing more than ill-informed speculation, which I hope is dispelled by my statement.”