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EPL A Leeds co-owner has spoken out about redeveloping the area around Elland Road George Wood/Getty Images Peter Lowy is not the most public of Leeds United’s board of directors, but this week, he gave an interview that may have prompted questions for supporters. It was released on the BBC Radio Leeds podcast Don’t Go To Bed Just Yet, on Wednesday, and it is the first time Lowy has spoken on the record about the club to a local media outlet. Advertisement Across an hour-long discussion, he spoke about many topics, but his comments on Elland Road’s redevelopment and the wider area felt particularly notable. The Athletic takes a look at Lowy, what he said, and why it was significant. Lowy has been a board member at Leeds since May 2020, having invested in the 49ers Enterprises vehicle. He has supported United since he was a child. He grew up in Australia and remembers listening to Match of the Day through a radio in the 1960s and 1970s, which cemented his love for Leeds and English football. As an adult, Lowy has built a hugely successful career. His father founded the Westfield organisation, which Lowy would later jointly lead with his brother, overseeing retail developments around the world. Now, alongside his role as a director at Elland Road, Lowy is a prominent voice in the Lowy Family Group, an investment business focused on listed equities, real estate, and technology. He began by saying close to £20million had already been spent on the plans to redevelop Elland Road. Lowy was pleased it had only taken two-and-a-half years to get approval for the plans, based on how well the club and Leeds City Council had collaborated. Preliminary works at Elland Road have already started, he said, but construction contracts and pricings were being finalised for the bulk of the development to come. He reiterated the club was doing this to increase revenue, which allows them to compete with the best in the country, but by getting fans to spend more time and money at the stadium rather than hiking ticket prices. “The other thing that’s very important is the ability to get mass transit to the stadium, ” he said. “From the mayor’s point of view, the tram, from my point of view, light rail, but, as fans know, once you get out of the train at Leeds station, if you don’t walk that 2. 1 miles (to the ground), how are you going to get there? “A stadium the size we’re going to build, and a club our size, needs to be able to get people there quickly, easily and have them spend time there. ” Advertisement Lowy talked about the importance of the wider regeneration of the land around Elland Road, while also criticising the planners who chose to have the M621 motorway separate the south of the city from its centre. “One thing I do know a lot about is urban planning, because of the Westfield business we’re in, and whoever decided, in the early 1970s, to build the M621, all they did is cut south Leeds off from the rest of the city, ” he said. “That part of Leeds is in the bottom five per cent of the economic ladder of the UK. ” Lowy admitted one of the reasons he was speaking publicly about this topic was to apply pressure on local and national government. He said, with the stadium redevelopment as a base, the correct infrastructure in the area could unlock investment of between £1billion and £2bn. “If the government can actually allocate the capital and build the infrastructure to get to and from Elland Road, out to White Rose (shopping centre), and then into the centre of the city, we could raise and invest somewhere between one and two billion pounds on that site. ” Time is of the essence, however. As he tries to turn the screw on the politicians, Lowy called on them to pick their preferred mass transit route, decide on the stations and establish what land needs to be bought. “It does need to be done in a timely manner because people like myself, and the capital we have, won’t sit around for 10 years, ” he said. “We can invest wherever we choose to invest. ” As it stands, there are no active planning applications in place for any of the land which surrounds the stadium. However, there are bold visions and hopes. In the past few weeks, Lowy said the council has signed off on a planning statement, which maps out a framework for how the area surrounding the stadium could be regenerated. This statement suggests between 1, 500 and 2, 000 new homes, a residential population of more than 3, 000, as well as new leisure (hotel, retail, gym) and workspace uses. Advertisement The land in question is to the west of the stadium, occupied by the interim Elland Road park and ride, Planet Ice and matchday parking (including Fullerton Park). There is land to the east of the stadium and Lowfields Road, occupied by Centenary Square Pavilion and warehousing. And there are two plots south-east of Elland Road, off Wesley Street. As Lowy mentioned, there is broad support for a tram system to be brought to the city, but a decision is yet to be made on which route would serve Elland Road and, in any case, projections do not foresee it being operational until the mid to late 2030s. The Holbeck Viaduct Project is another scheme that is gathering support. It may not directly border the stadium, but it looks to repurpose an unused railway track as a walkway from the city centre to the ground. Like the hopes for a tram, this still has some way to go before becoming a reality. Lowy is calling on the government, at local and national level, to provide the infrastructure needed to unlock the potential of this corner of Leeds. While he is demonstrably confident in the Lowy Family Group’s ability to generate the investment needed for developing the area, he needs the powers that be to deliver the transport routes. On February 10, Lowy was pictured at 11 Downing Street, where he met Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer and MP for Leeds West and Pudsey. He said on the podcast he was trying to represent the city of Leeds — and push for infrastructure changes that would allow for investment. No. The redevelopment of Elland Road is already underway and is not bound by what goes on around the stadium. Leeds are planning to expand the stadium to 53, 000 seats. Lowy, United, the council, West Yorkshire Combined Authority and national government are acutely aware that, however, the stadium’s expansion presents an opportunity to redevelop the wider area at the same time. Advertisement If the stadium and its surrounding footprint are going through this level of change, it makes sense to seize that moment with the infrastructure and land around it. Anything which increases the number of people visiting Elland Road, as well as the time and money they spend, is important to United. More revenue means better players, which means better performance, which means better exposure, which means better sponsors, which creates a cycle that, hopefully, leads to a more successful team. While the stadium will be redeveloped, regardless of what goes on around it, if that wider area can be more pleasant, better organised, more attractive, more entertaining and easier to reach, the club will only benefit. In terms of the city, as Lowy articulated, this corner of south Leeds has felt cut off from the city centre for decades. If this regeneration can reconnect it to the heart of the city, it’s going to attract more business, more jobs, more housing, more investment and, hopefully, a higher standard of living. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle Beren Cross is a football writer for The Athletic, covering Leeds United. Before joining The Athletic, he reported on Leeds United for Leeds Live. He was born in Doncaster and grew up in Lincoln. Follow Beren on Twitter @Berencross