Plans to allow Millwall Football Club to develop housing around The Den are set to be signed off by Lewisham Council next week.
Lewisham plans to give the Championship club a 999-year lease on both The Den and the adjacent Lions Centre, which is used by the club's community trust, removing a clause in the lease forbidding residential development on the land.
Approval by Lewisham's elected mayor, Brenda Dacres, and her cabinet will allow the club to push on with plans announced in 2020 to expand The Den from 20,000 to 34,000 seats and build a "vibrant new community" around the ground.
Get The Greenwich Wire in your inbox Processing... Success! You're on the list. Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again. The stadium was built on old playing fields at Senegal Fields, close to South Bermondsey station, in 1993. Lewisham retained the freehold when Millwall moved in, with restrictions keeping the land for sporting and light industrial use. The Lions Centre is held on a short-term lease from the council.
Lewisham has long wanted to redevelop land around the Den, which is mainly in industrial use. The original New Bermondsey plans led to a huge row with the club in 2016 when Lewisham announced it wanted to take some of its land back from the club to hand to a developer, Renewal, that had links with a former council officer.
Millwall - which had its own plans for the site - had threatened to leave the borough, but the plans were scrapped the following year amid calls for Sir Steve Bullock, the borough's elected mayor at the time, to step down. A later inquiry concluded there was no wrongdoing.
Major plans for the land around the ground, with 3,000 new homes and 32-storey tower blocks, were approved two years ago and the club has been in talks with the council about its own plans that it hopes will secure its future.
" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/greenwichwire.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/millwall_1600.jpg?fit=300%2C169&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/greenwichwire.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/millwall_1600.jpg?fit=780%2C439&ssl=1" src="https://i0.wp.com/greenwichwire.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/millwall_1600.jpg?resize=780%2C439&ssl=1" alt="The Den signage" class="wp-image-52927" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/greenwichwire.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/millwall_1600.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/greenwichwire.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/millwall_1600.jpg?resize=300%2C169&ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/greenwichwire.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/millwall_1600.jpg?resize=150%2C84&ssl=1 150w, https://i0.wp.com/greenwichwire.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/millwall_1600.jpg?resize=768%2C432&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/greenwichwire.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/millwall_1600.jpg?resize=1536%2C864&ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/greenwichwire.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/millwall_1600.jpg?resize=1200%2C675&ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/greenwichwire.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/millwall_1600.jpg?resize=1568%2C882&ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/greenwichwire.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/millwall_1600.jpg?resize=400%2C225&ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/greenwichwire.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/millwall_1600.jpg?resize=706%2C397&ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/greenwichwire.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/millwall_1600.jpg?w=1600&ssl=1 1600w, https://i0.wp.com/greenwichwire.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/millwall_1600-1024x576.jpg?w=370&ssl=1 370w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" data-recalc-dims="1"/>The Den currently has a 20,000 capacity and tight controls on what the land can be used for. Credit: The Greenwich Wire Millwall have bounced between the second and third tiers of English football for the past three decades. While Millwall have a reputation as a carefully-run club, most clubs in the second-tier Championship make heavy losses and building housing around the ground would give the side a new stream of income that is not affected by performance on the pitch.
The new lease would also increase income for Lewisham Council, town hall documents say, but the public papers do not go into detail about the financial aspects of the deal.
"A revised lease structure has several benefits for the council, including enabling the development of much-needed housing and provision of a new community facility," a council paper says.
"Millwall are an important and valued stakeholder in the borough, providing jobs and driving spend and commercial activity so a lease structure which supports development will in turn support the sustainability of Millwall and will further support jobs, employment and economic activity."
Any development would be some years away: Millwall would still need to apply for planning permission to develop its land and rebuild The Den.
Dacres and her cabinet are due to make a decision next Wednesday.
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