For the want of a nail, a kingdom was lost. Not quite a kingdom, but a princely piece of real estate nonetheless. Eighteen years ago, the lease of a small strip of land running under the length of Lord’s at its northern end was lost to MCC for the want of a decent bid, or a little foresight, setting off an intriguing saga of which the conclusion is yet to be determined.
If anything can be described as bizarre in these days of Diane Abbott and Boris Johnson, then the wrangling over the future development of Lord’s has been just that. It is a story that has dragged on, the latest stage and detail of which is outlined in The Times today, which has been posted to members this week in a lengthy consultation letter and voted on, after a recommendation from the main committee, in the autumn.
It is a story that takes in a history of the railways — long forgotten, cavernous tunnels — the vision and stubbornness of a north London property developer; the lack of vision and (then) impecuniousness of MCC; the ghost of a former England captain, whose love of the most famous cricket ground in the world was based in part on a view of greenery from his perch in the committee room; political intrigue; the financial crisis; the precarious future of Test cricket, and the egos of men, great and small, including that of a former prime minister, who resigned from the club’s main committee in a fit of pique.
Where to start? The late 19th century would be a good place, given that was when a
37 metre-wide strip of land, originally owned by MCC, was requisitioned for the construction of three railway tunnels under what is now the Nursery Ground. Two of those tunnels became redundant and largely forgotten until the eventual owners Railtrack (whose then chief-executive, Gerald Corbett, is now chairman of MCC) saw a chance to exploit this wasting asset by offering a long-term lease in 1999 on the Lord’s stretch.
Had MCC the money or the vision, or either, to acquire this lease back then, none of what has followed since would have happened. Instead, the club bid tamely at auction (and remarkably in this era of gung-ho capitalism did not consider borrowing extensively to acquire) and was outdone by a keen-eyed property developer called Charles Rifkind, who lives in and knows the area intimately. As a developer more generally, he is described on his company’s website by his partner, Jonathan Levy, as being “driven by the deal and the negotiation”.
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For relative peanuts (£2.35 million) Rifkind negotiated a remarkable deal: a 999-year lease on the two tunnels and the right to develop them, which has stymied MCC’s attempts to plan for the long-term development of the Nursery End of the ground since.
Stalemate ensued because MCC owns a shorter lease above ground (and 18 inches below ground) and Rifkind the lengthy lease on the tunnels. Neither can feasibly develop without the co-operation of the other and they have circled each other warily ever since. Things improved eventually, but then turned acrimonious.
Typically, it took an Australian, Keith Bradshaw, to get things moving. Bradshaw was appointed MCC chief executive in 2006 — he is probably sitting in Adelaide right now chuckling at how slowly the wheels of administration move in England — and within three years, thawed relations between Rifkind and MCC had constituted a redevelopment committee (on which I sat). It duly came up with a grandly titled £400 million Vision for Lord’s, incorporating a dramatic redevelopment of the ground, paid for through flats on the contested strip at its northern edge.
At this point I should declare my hand: I thought the proposed plan, drafted by the architects Herzog & de Meuron, a stunning one. I was aware of my limited (to nil) expertise in property development, a gap very ably filled by other bright minds on the committee. Frankly I had no idea of the viability of the scheme.
This was something that understandably concerned the club’s main committee, since the plan appeared at about the same time as two other key developments: the global financial crisis, which raised the issue of excessive risk, and the rise of Twenty20, which put the future of Lord’s as a staging ground of two Tests a year in doubt. The first of those has subsided (although Brexit has since emerged as another threat to the London property market), the second has not.
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Money was not the only issue. In the committee room under the home team’s dressing room, the often empty chair in front of the main window seemed to be haunting the wrangling over the future of Lord’s: what kind of ground, it seemed to be asking, do the members want?
The chair in question was the throne of Gubby Allen, the former England captain, who had stipulated that the Edrich and Compton stands should be no more than two storeys high, so that the trees beyond the Nursery end, and the spire of the St John’s Wood Church should always be visible from the members’ pavilion. The remarkable development of the ground over the past few years has borne this stipulation — that Lord’s should be a characterful cricket ground and not a faceless stadium — in mind.
Amid concerns over the scale of the plan, the redevelopment committee was disbanded (in dismissive fashion it must be said) and a new “Masterplan for Lord’s” outlined, which eventually led to Sir John Major’s resignation from the main committee. The Masterplan for Lord’s was to be a piecemeal redevelopment of various stands financed conservatively from the club’s own funds, which underwhelmed certain members of the former redevelopment committee, such as Lord Grabiner, QC.
To add to the political intrigue since then, Robert Griffiths, QC, who headed the redevelopment committee that proposed the original Vision for Lord’s, now sits as one of the 12 elected members on the club’s main committee. His term ends in 2019. His backers? Sir John and Lord Grabiner.
The Rifkind Levy Partnership has now put a new vision to the club through the architect David Morley. The Morley Plan is, essentially, a watered down version of the earlier Vision for Lord’s, involving two blocks of flats on the northern side, a smaller development under the Nursery, a more welcoming entrance along the Wellington Road, little financial risk to the club, and a windfall to redevelop the ground in an attractive and sensitive way.
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Readers of The Times can see and read of those plans in today’s paper and make their own minds up, as indeed must MCC members over the next few months, as they set the Morley Plan against the club’s own updated Masterplan for Lord’s. Mind you, given that planning would need to be sought and a commitment given to the ground remaining open throughout any rebuild, it is uncertain what percentage of the ageing 18,000-strong membership will be around to see the full benefits. I hope to just make it.
Only two things are certain in this intriguing tale: Rifkind has experienced no buyer’s remorse, whereas MCC, having just posted out a 42-page consultation to 18,000 members at who knows what cost and having spent more than the cost of the original lease on professional fees alone, has been left to regret its lack of vision 18 years ago when the option on two long-forgotten and disused railway tunnels first came up for auction.
