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The station near the new Tottenham Hotspur stadium is to be renamed after the club pressured London mayor Sadiq Khan and his transport office, who had insisted the club pay more than £ 14.7 million for this privilege.
The North London Premier League club contacted Transport for London (TfL) for the first time more than two years ago to change the name of the White Hart Lane station in Tottenham Hotspur.
A memorandum of understanding between the club and TfL, controlled by Khan, is being drafted but the Spurs will not have to respect the multi-million pound asking price he has strongly contested.
The club, one of the richest in the UK, will see the move as a victory as it seeks to take advantage of a new stadium with a capacity of 62,000 seats, which has been hit by delays and increased costs. However, this decision may raise concerns about the loss of revenue and the precedent it creates for the corporatization of London's heritage transportation system.
TfL's policy is not to sell the names of designated heritage stations on a long-term basis, but agreed to explore the idea after the initial meetings with Spurs. A third-party badessment of what would have been useful if the station was renamed for a 10-year period was estimated at £ 11.7m, in addition to the implementation costs of £ 3m. Tottenham challenged this badessment and said that he did not want to pay.
TfL informed Khan, the president of the transport organization, that the change of station name would be possible only on the basis of commercial conditions and, even in this case, would be subject to public consultation.
Since then, however, Tottenham has announced to potential trading partners that the name of the station would be changed, according to documents seen by the Guardian.
The turnaround came after meetings between Tottenham officials, TfL and London City Hall, where the club's executive director, Donna Cullen, pleaded her case. She said the name change was essential to achieving a £ 250 million sales strategy centered on the sale of stadium naming rights to a major partner and that the club did not want the change to happen. name be treated as a commercial agreement.
At a meeting in December 2017 with Leah Kreitzman, Mayor's Director for External and International Affairs, Cullen suggested that the club could fund a new escalator at Tottenham Hale station instead of paying the commercial fees. TfL decided that the cost would be a minimum of £ 3.5 million and of limited value.
Tottenham Hotspur declined to comment.
A spokesman for the Mayor of London said: "The mayor does not want to set a precedent by selling station names. However, a unique brand partnership between TfL and Tottenham Hotspur would benefit both TfL and Tottenham, supporting significant investments to create a new sports, leisure and entertainment destination as part of the broader revitalization of the city. region. TfL is still discussing this opportunity. "
The co-leader of the Green Party Siân Berry, who plans to stand against Khan at the mayor's election in London in 2020, said the name change would "open the slippery path" towards others. Known stations and that the network would be "cluttered" with the branding of the company. .
"The question of money too, of course. If something is worth the money, that's what it should be if it happens, "she said. "The way this has happened will also arouse great interest for me and the other members of the London badembly. A decision of this nature should be subject to scrutiny and should certainly be the subject of public consultation. "
A spokesman for TfL said, "TfL has considerable experience in creating successful business partnerships for the benefit of its customers and London in general. Opportunities of this nature are always carefully evaluated before being completed to ensure that TfL offers the best value for its stakeholders. "
A metro station on the Piccadilly line bears the name of its north London rival, Arsenal, since it was changed from Gillespie Road in 1932 following an election campaign. TfL, created in 2000 as part of the Greater London Authority, has developed a policy of not selling heritage station names, but has sometimes done so for 24-hour periods for relationship purposes. public.
Khan's predecessor, Boris Johnson, dismissed the station's name change, largely because of the cost of modifying the thousands of signs and maps on the network. In 2013, TfL also rejected the report of a member of the Conservative Assembly of London, according to which the stations should have corporate sponsors, privatized stations with brand names such as Burberry's Bond Street ; Knightsbridge, home of Harrods and Virgin Euston.
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