Featured image credit: Bradley Rial
Championship football club Millwall is set to move forward with plans to redevelop the land surrounding The Den after securing a new 999-year lease deal with Lewisham Council.
The club’s plans will focus on enhancing the matchday experience for supporters, developing new and existing revenue streams, and fulfilling the stadium’s non-matchday potential.
Millwall’s New Bermondsey plans will also include residential development. The regeneration project was approved back in January 2022 and includes 3,500 new homes.
Millwall has played at The Den since 1993. The club revealed redevelopment plans for the stadium back in February 2020 as it sought to bring the venue up to Premier League standards.
Following the new “landmark” agreement with the council, the club said it will keep supporters up to date with further developments as and when they occur. The previous lease agreement had contained a restriction against residential development but this has now been removed.
The Den has a capacity of 20,000 and the club has plans to increase this to 34,000. Millwall had previously been involved in a dispute over the future of The Den but in October 2019 a deal was reached to terminate a conditional land sale agreement for the area surrounding the stadium.
Millwall chairman James Berylson said: “We are delighted that Lewisham Council has offered Millwall Football Club a new, long lease that will permit us to bring forward development plans in New Bermondsey for residential accommodation, a new community, and an ambitious football club.
“I am particularly grateful to Lewisham Mayor, Brenda Dacres, and her predecessor, Damien Egan MP, both of whom offered friendship and support to Millwall and acknowledged our ambitions for the local community and our club. My family’s involvement with Millwall goes back almost 20 years. My father, John Berylson – who tragically died last year – from the outset had a vision and an ambition for the football club and its local community.
“It has taken us a long time to reach this turning point but my father’s passion and dogged determination never dimmed and it’s a great sadness to all of us that he is not here today to witness this milestone moment in the club’s history.”
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