Yeah, it must be terrible for them, wanting to buy land and property in order to run a football club, only to discover that they can only use those assets for sporting purposes. An absolute calamity.
Thing is, the owners of the ground aren't doing anything with it either. There's not a lot of benefit in having the owners of Oakwell sit back and watch entropy gradually reduce the place to dust. How long has Oakwell belonged to the current ownership? Is it 20 years? Anything worthy of note in that time? I'm not sure "at least they haven't sold it" is good enough.
Patrick Cryne split the club 50/50 with the council to prevent this very thing. If they ever agree to pay the Cryne's what they owe.. which id be amazed now if that ever happened.. The very best they could ever achieve is owning half. So your worry is pointless
What should they have done with it though? The maintenance is down to the tenants. I'd say they should have been FAR stricter with enforcing the maintenance aspect of the lease than they have been but wouldn't expect them to be responsible for it
Well if you think Oakwell is an up to date, comfortable stadium with plenty of facilities then that's your perogative. I don't.
Would it be common for a commercial landlord to build new facilities for a tenant though? One of our sites at work is leased and we recently built a large extension on it which we had to pay for. I'd assume that counts as infrastructure
Depends whether the owners want a good modern stadium for the club and the community. It doesn't look to me like they do.
Anyone aware of what maintenance the Crynes did in the 20 yrs they were tenant part owner , is there a list knocking about