Directors / Tim Spencer



Technical Director
BA (Hons)

Tim was promoted to the Board of Directors in April 2002. Prior to his promotion he was the Director of Planning and Design with responsibility for all of the stadium planning, environmental traffic management, development planning, urban design, highway and traffic engineering, urban renewal and master planning work undertaken by Steer Davies Gleave, and he still remains actively involved.

He is also responsible for the company’s ongoing stadium planning and design work for the Arsenal Football Club, Gaelic Athletic Association, IRFU, Wembley National Stadium Ltd, Chelsea Football Club and, most recently, Tottenham Hotspur Football Club.

Tim has provided expert witness evidence regarding transportation and environmental issues to both appeal and call-in public inquiries and examinations in public in the UK, the Planning Appeal Board in Northern Ireland, An Bord Pleanala in Ireland and the High Court in Ireland and the UK.
Seems like he has a better idea of what he is talking about than you son!!!!

Well said Brian.

I wouldn’t worry Brian there are some people you just cannot argue with even if you could build a stadium on it that holds 60’000 we still cannot afford it. I think they should scrap the vote and just get on with it this is just wasting time. If they can prove it before we sign on the Tesco dotted line then yes lets do it but I cannot see any flying pigs down Scotty Road just yet.

We cannot afford it, it’s to small.

More rubbishing of (ostensibly) sound & informed comment. The guy is a Director at a company that plays a critical role in the development & viability of large new stadia, i.e. access, crowd flow & public safety. They have done Emirates Stadium, New Wembley, Croke Park and Stamford bridge. Seems to me he knows more than most.

I don’t blame die-hard anti-Kirkby individuals from holding or expressing their opinion. I just find it tedious & boring to keep reading mind-bendingly vaccuous & ill-conceived nonsense about how there really must be a rabbit in the hat somewhere.

Kirkby would never be my first choice, despite many of my extended family living in the town. But in terms of raising the Everton bar in the foreseeable future and actually presenting a realistic (i.e. affordable & deliverable) opportunity, there is no other option.

Get over it guys, pleeeeeease. If we don’t go to Kirkby then we are stuffed. Then you’ll all need to find another scapegoat for your frustration, unless you’ll all lay that at the feet of Messrs Kenwright & Wyness too.

Change is difficult & emotionall sometimes. But sometimes the head has to take precedence over the heart. In that respect Terry Leahy (a fan lest we forget) is right, as indeed is Keith Wyness.

i don’t wish to tempt fate with words such as the team being on the edge of greatness. I’ve actually taken some time to accept that David Moyes is the man to lead us to the new frontier. Last season I became convinced and there is little doubt that we now have the most accomplished squad (young, strong, skilled, developing & valuable) since the 80’s.

That team, and manager, and club, backroom team and all else, now deserves a ground befitting our regained status as one of the leading clubs in the country. And we need it YESTERDAY, not in 5 or 10 more years after more & more feasibilities and rabbits in hats.

Get over it. Stop separating the wheat from the chaff and keeping hold of the chaff. EFC needs more change and quickly. We are going places. if you’re not excitied right now then you must be dead. Stop the whinging and the negativity and look at the huge upside.

If we had £200m in the bank, an average gate of 55,000 over 10 years, regular CL participants, a billionaire proprietor etc etc then fine, maybe we could do better. Anybody who seriously thinks right now, with our profile, financial position, earnings potential & performances over the past 20 years, that we can do much better than what’s on offer at Kirkby has their head stuck in a very dark & smelly place.

Wake up & smell the coffee gentlemen. This club is perched on a knife edge. One way holds the opportunity of self-propelled success, the other way leads to Elland Road.

Here’s to a top 4 finish.

Ok, fair point, but:
He’e not an architect
His view is unlikely to be toally neutral given that he is fulfilling a role for EFC.
He has not seen the plans (probably because there aren’t any, but skipping past that).

The piece is not a feasability analysis; it can’t be - we only got the "google-sketchups" yesterday.

Even an idiot can see that the loop will require severe design to make a stadium/hotel/ski-slope/whatever fit in the space.

Once Bestway produce some designs then we can comment on the fesability of fitting something into the space.

Once they come up with some financing plans we can take a view on weather the ski slope will have to be dropped.

I have no doubt the land could hold a 55,000 seater stadium. However as I stated yesterday I could not ever see how the stadium would be able to be evacuated safely. I am no architect but to me looking at the footprint and plans released yesterday it seems pretty obvious.
The site is suitable but only if you could move all the surrounding main roads(I suppose also the tunnel!!). That I feel is why the land is useless and in addition why Bestway don’t want the land for their own use either.

I wonder how big the brown envelope was,that he recieved from Kenwright

I guess the most germane point is the cash. Bestway don’t have it, we don’t have it, Tesco do.

Even if the loop were possible, we couldn’t afford it.

Very eloquently and purposefully put Alan. It never ceases to amaze me how every consultant or pseudo-architect pulled out of the hat by the NO vote is expected to be taken seriously while consultants acting on behalf of the Club are idiots and only acting on behalf of their own wallets.

Terry Leahy has already said that the Loop site was looked at and found wanting, no doubt for all the reasons Tim Spencer provides. This issue is a potentially ruinous diversion cynically placed before Everton supporters in the midst of a vote in order to influence that vote. If this ploy is successful we and the club could lose the chance of a new stadium, albeit not in the location we would have chosen if our choices had been endless. But our choices are extremely limited. Move to Kirkby or stay at Goodison as it is. That’s the simple choice we have to make.

Why not wait and see? Wait and see what Bestway/HOK come up with?

What’s the hurry? Kirkby will still be there in a couple of months’ time, and so will Tesco - they stand to make a massive profit from this deal, and they’re not exactly going to be able to get another football club to come on board are they?

What’s the rush? If Bestway can find an acceptable solution, we’re all going to want to buy into aren’t we? And if they don’t, then we can all trudge off to our flat pack arena in Kirkby knowing that we did our best to keep our great club in a great stadium, in the heart of our great city.

None of my business but Colin’s post is obviously defamatory suggesting as it does that Mr. Spencer has provided an expert opinion favourable to the EFC board in exchange for a ’bung’. Does the site have libel lawyers in place ? I frankly would hate such an excellent website to be closed down because it chose to publish the occasional piece of idiocy such as this. Fair comment is one thing. Criminal allegations are entirely different. Editors- disown this now ! (By the way no brown envelope received- just trying to restore some sense to this vexed subject !)

>potentially ruinous diversion
>cynically placed before Everton >supporters in

Hang on, that works both ways. The Loop was found wanting by Tesco because it couldn’t fit a Tesco uber-store, not because it couldn’t fit a stadium.

Barry lightfoot maybe the Loop is a non starter I personally wont give an opinion on its suitability as I am not qualified
to.What I will give you my opinion on is Everton FC and it supporters.In this field I am well qualified.Kirkby and the Tesco deal might well be the cheapest way we will ever get a new Stadium but that doesnt make it the right deal. Wether you like it or not thousands upon thousands of us Blues are against it for one reason or another.In fact there are plenty of reasons why we dont want it.My main bone of contention is the idea that a new ground will have corporate types queing up for private boxes thus making the club richer.This is complete and utter bollocks.I have been using the corporate facilities at Goodison since 1994
and I can tell you this.No one I know from these lounges or boxes would dream of entertaining clients or friends out in Kirkby.
I find it laughable that you think some kind of mad rush will take place for fans to sample the delights of Roughwood.A box at Anfield would be more preferable
to most who are trying to make a good impression.Corporate types are not real fans they want a day out with all the trimmings.A sortie in to town to the bars after wards with as little hassle as possible.Kirkby just doesnt appeal in this way.Its a joke to even consider that buisness men and millionaires would entertain that place. Our fanbase is hardly brimming over with the types Wyness seeks and moving away from town will make it even harder to attract them.Cheap to build maybe
Hard to fill definetly.Why cant you yes voters see this/

Sandy, Then vote YES. It will only be yes to further negotiations not a final decision. A NO vote will just kill off the only viable and affordable option that we have at the moment with no surety of anything else on the horizon.

Rob, grow up.
I’m a lawyer and there is nothing libelous in the brown envelope comment. I doubt if very much of this board could be taken as factual.
The is a message board/comment section for pitys sake. If you are unable to view it in such a manner I suggest you look elsewhere.

Dave

LOL.

Hmm, I would imagine even a 51% vote in favour of Kirkby, and the club won’t even bother rubbishing other ideas on the OS any more, it will just ignore them completely!

I can’t make out the small print, but I can read the headline clearly enough: We’re going to Kirkby, like it or not.

Fed up with this,
The site is wanting because you can’t safely and practically fit a STADIUM on it. Not even bestway or LCC are suggesting you can have a supermarket there as well!

Furthermore, after years of sitting on their hands and doing nothing for Everton, Liverpool City Council suddenly decide to help sponsor this option which just happens to emerge as we are voting. If that is not cynical and manipulative I do not know what is!!

Bootle Blue. I too am a lawyer although it is many years since I studied libel.. Back then to publicly accuse someone of taking a bribe to put forward a false opinion was considered defamatory, not least because it directly accuses a person of criminal conduct. Nothing wrong with robust comment, Bootle Blue but I expect if someone called you a criminal on this website you would be on to the Law Society checking out your position. And I’m actually trying to protect the editors of this excellent website from any litigation that may follow from publishing stupid observations like the ’brown envelope’ one. No doubt you will provide your services free of charge to defend them and argue that to accuse someone of corruption is not libellous if and when the Sue Grabbit and Run letter arrives in the post ?

I know there will be a chorus of 'well they would say that wouldn't they'? and accusations of brown envelopes being passed around but have a look at who this bloke is.

Some of us have been saying this for weeks and been ridiculed (in the main) for it. The Loop is a non starter and as I said in a previous post...wouldn't pass the health and safety muster, never mind any of the other difficulties (sorry for being tiresome Lyndon!)

Vote YES to Kirkby - At least it gives an option in the future and we can still look at other sites.

Vote NO to Kirkby - Door closed, other sites questionable. Everton fooked.

Anybody on here not a Lawyer?

I clean a lawyer’s office.

The problem with the ’wait and see’ argument is - wait and see WHAT?

The Loop site is too small to safely accommodate a large stadium. This is not going to change (it’s not going to get any bigger).

Building anything on the Loop site will be very expensive if it’s possible at all due to access problems. That is not going to change.

The Bestway / LCC combination are not going to provide the financial package to anywhere near match the Tesco / Barr / Knowsley package. Again, this is not going to change.

We have waited long enough. Time to go.

Rob, I take your point, but there is a point when the law ceases to be an ass.
I’m an ’ex-yes’ man myself; I moved because I don’t think that Kirby will attract the additional revenue that the club will need in the future.
Having said that I, in fact ’we’ all need to calm down a bit. I firmly believe that BK is doing what he thinks is best. I just don’t agree with him and I’m dissapointed that the club appears openly hostile to alternate choices.

In fact, I’m going to ignore this debate for a few days and concentrate on the team.
P2 W2
Couldn’t be better.

Yeah I’m with Tony on this on...

I’m an architect based in Ireland and I have won every planning battle that I have fought including at the ’An Bord Pleanala’( that’s the Irish Planning Appeals Board ) mentioned above. I have won against vested interests who have wheeled out a myriad of their own consultants to justify their cases. As a result I’m well aquainted with the BS with which biased consultants spit out. I’m aquainted with the smell of it - it usually causes me to look very carefully at their assertions and the more you look the more you generally find that they are twisting it in their own favour.

There is no way on earth a top earning football club with 40,000 paying loyal supporters, a huge TV deal and other sources of income needs to attach itself to the coat-tails of a huge commerical development in order to finance its new stadium.There clearly are investment issues at the club.

The move far away from a major urban centre (in this case Liverpool) bucks the trend of every new major stadium development in the world including the ones mentioned above Croke Park, the Emirates, Landsdowne Road, etc.It does not make any sense.

Combine with this our new away strip and I think we are starting to model ourselves on Bolton !!!

"There are clearly investment issues at the club."? No shit sherlock. The fact that we have no money is something that the club haven;t denied.
It’s better a brown envelope from the club than the bag of sweets KEIOC give top their kids for the stadium drawings

Architect’s, Lawyers... there’s a wealth of talent on toffeeweb today.

Shame they all talk shite.

Brian...it’s fine if you resent professionals sharing their educated viewpoint with you...it’s also fine if you attack someone who has no financial gain to make from these submissions for being honest instead of asking why? or seeking more answers to your questions...its fine if you want to shout down people in a simple degoratory way...its speaks volumes about you.

Bestway have responded:
"Consultants HOK Sport working on behalf on Bestway and in conjunction with Liverpool City Council have come to an initial view that a 55,000 seat stadium could be accommodated on the site
Early "concept proposals" show a development spanning the ramped loop road, which provides for pedestrian circulation to be safely accommodated around the stadium, as well as the necessary emergency access.
Some further site investigations are continuing in order to complete a more detailed report into this exciting stadium proposal at the site within the home of Everton.
This represents a unique opportunity for the club, the supporters and the City as a whole."



So, please, can we wait and see? Unless one of you lawyers is a fuckin clairvoyant, in which case put us out of our misery.

Joe, Told you, you talk shite don’t worry though, it’s fine.

Tony I canot believe you came out with this statement "and I can tell you this. No one I know from these lounges or boxes would dream of entertaining clients or friends out in Kirkby." So a 15 minute drive to Kirkby to get the best seats in the house and be wined and dined is too much to bear, well that’s a complete load of bollocks.
"Well chaps we got the best seats in the house to watch top of the table Everton in a chauffeur driven limo, champers on the way steak dinner when we get there all washed down with a flagon or 2 of Chang"

"Er how long is the drive"

"About 15 minutes"

"Balls to that mate, 15 minutes I’ll watch it in the pub instead with a pint"

p.s. I’d rather stay in the city but it’s taken 10 years to get this far and we all no the loop isn’t going to happen.

So, I have some clients in town. Here they are in the City of Culture, the world famous Liverpool, home to the Beatles, the Liver Birds, Ferry Cross the Mersey, the Royal Philharmonic, The Liverpool Reds Soccer Franchise, and where am I going to take them?

Kirkby?

Uh-huh.

Where’s that?

Well, actually it’s not even in Liverpool, it’s just the other side of the M57, it’s a new town.

What’s there?

Well, there’s Everton, we used to be the other team in Liverpool, but now we have a great value ground in a new town just by the biggest Tesco in the north. But, hey, the club’s debt is 30m less than it might have been!

Fook right off, nobody’s gonna be taking their clients out to fooking Kirkby if they want to impress them!

Get real.

I can’t get this argument that executive boxes etc..will not sell at Kirkby ? Why fucking not ?
Even Bolton fill their boxes and their stadium is in the middle of nowhere. Why wouldn’t people want to entertain clients in a modern stadium, watching a famous, successful team.
That particular arguments is so flawed its laughable.

Sandy, Wake up will you lad. So HOK have responded.Well they were bound to weren’t they? These people have come up with a plan that is inherently unsafe and would not get past the first post. And now they say they are going to have another look at it? If they can’t get it right the first time I wouldn’t trust them to landscape my garden. They ignored basic, national and statutory safety features. In order to build this thing we would need bridges all over the place, access roads for vehicles,tunnels for the roads and there would still be no enabling commercial development or a car park for those of us who can’t walk or get public transport to the game. In other words, we can’t afford it!!! I fully expect a reply from you or somebody now, asking how I know we can’t afford it at which point I will fucking give up and bury my head in the sand until this thing is over. Not only are straws being clutched at here but the straws are getting shorter and shorter. Yes I will wait and see Sandy. I will wait and see when a little bit of common sense is going to prevail in this debate.

Dave

How do you know we can’t afford it, when we haven’t seen the costings yet?

And why are you misrepesenting HOK? At no point have they said that they’re going to "have another look it". As far as I can see, they’ve simply underlined the fact that they think a stadium is feasible.

They’ve ignored nothing mate, it’s you that seems to be trying to second-guess what they are going to do.

Wait and see. You might be desperate to sell this club to the lowest bidder and go to Kirkby, but a lot of us blues won’t settle for second best until we know our first choice is out of the question

Eileen Roberts

can you tell me where I can find the quote by Terry Leahy stating the loop was looked at by the club and found wanting ?

If Eileen has gone can anyone else help ?

Dave

Dunno if Eileen has gone, so here you go:

In his "open letter" Leahy says: "The problem within the ?loop? site (10 acres) and Goodison (7 acres) is that they could (just) accommodate a new ground, but there would be no adjoining land for commercial development to pay for it. So the entire cost of the development would fall on the club, a burden they could not bear. The loop site has an occupier which would have to be bought out. By way of interest, Tesco owns a neighbouring site and we had hoped this would be the location for the club, but it simply could not be made to work. The Long Lane site is larger, but has 60 occupiers and serious traffic difficulties."

So, the only issues Leahy has with the Loop is the cost of the development, and lack of commercial enabling development. No mention of any of the stuff this latest fella has come up with off the top of his head.

Which is why we should wait for Bestway/HOK to tell us what they propose, and give us an idea of how it could be funded.

Seems simple to me, but seems to make some people very, very angry.

Nah! Not very, very angry..just very, very frustrated at the lack of sense demonstrated in this debate from some quarters.

By the way, my wife has views of her own which are not exactly the same as mine, but then she can more than look after herself!Especially in this debate!

I presume your missus is Eileen Roberts - and i was just answering the question from the other Dave. But I’m very pleased to hear she can look after herself, though what that has to do with anything is kind of beyond me.

Thanks Sandy

So Terry was actually saying it was found wanting from a Tesco point of view ?


One more thing do you think Eileen and Dave (Roberts ) are related ? or worse still. is some f..ken Stanley Baxter type character sitting at his PC pretending to be 4-5 different people ?

Dave - or is it Eileens turn to use the pc -

Thank you I laughed out loud

Yeah, the key word there is "neighbouring". Leahy is obviously referring to Tesco’s part in the "Project Jennifer" regeneration which will see them open a 115,000 sq ft superstore in the Scotland ward (wonder what Grosvenor made / will make of that?). It’s clear to me that he wasn’t talking about the Loop site but the landbank that Tesco own further down Great Homer Street area. I might be wrong but I was under the impression that Bestway own the whole Loop site anyway. I suspect Leahy was framing his submission with a sentiment along the lines of "we even looked at Everton in Everton first, so rest assured we’re not heartlessly heading (*) to Kirkby on a whim".
Anyway, for those interested, the full shopping list for Project Jen is: the Tesco store; 80,000 sq. ft of non-food retail stores; a market hall and 300 relocated outdoor market stalls; 480 new homes; a Primary Care Trust centre; a library; "leisure" facilities; 80,000 sq.ft of "light" industrial units; and a public transport interchange.
According to a "Public Notice" issued last week to all residents by Vauxhall Neighbourhood Council there will be a PJ "Q & A" meeting on September 4th at which all answers will be given to all questions. Of course, that’s after the EFC ballot.
(*) "Heartlessly heading": did you see what I did there?

So the experts disagree. One lot are paid for by the board, the others by Bestway.

What irritates me is the blind faith the ’Yes’ camp have in Kirby or bust.
This view is a nonsense.
Kirby is a dead-end. We get a cow-shed with a superstore in a fairly abject location.
To grow we need to leverage the home of this football team - Liverpool.
Investment in this City will grow over the coming years; if we’re out in Kirby we may as well be in Southport - the benefits of being in a major city will pass us by.

My wife has just pointed out that I’d promised to leave the debate alone this weekend.
Well I can’t.
It’s too important.
Think of it from an investors point of view and Kirby with a shop starts to look less appealing.

Bootle Blue - I made the same promise to my wife bud. And she’s a kopite! "Only til next Thursday love..."

Lets wait for the costings, Why wait because I can tell you this.

It costs £100 mill - we can’t afford it.
It costs £200 mill - we can’t afford it.
It costs £300 mill - we can’t afford it.
It costs £400 mill - we can’t afford it.
It costs £500 mill - we can’t afford it.
It costs £600 mill - we can’t afford it.

Easy eh. What you need to ask is who is going to pay for it because Bestway aren’t and LCC aren’t.
I know it’s the magic pixies that live all over the loop.