Story about the GT's from Chris Errington.
(Harve's gonna love it)
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]There is no doubt that the Green Taverners have been one of the biggest success stories at Plymouth Argyle over this decade.
The matchday FanFests, first held in the tented Pyramid Suite at the far end of Higher Home Park almost 10 years ago, became hugely popular and they continue to be so.
The Green Taverners also raised a substantial amount of money to give to Argyle staff when they were not being paid during the club’s financial collapse and fall into administration in 2011.
Once that traumatic period in the Pilgrims’ history had passed, the fans’ group made donations to numerous local charities and organisations.
Then, after Argyle announced plans for the redevelopment of the Mayflower Grandstand in 2017, the Green Taverners took up their most ambitious project yet.
Argyle’s plans included a single-storey supporters’ bar. The Green Taverners thought they could do better than that, though.
So they committed to raising the funds to do so and have agreed a five-year lease with Argyle.
The two-storey building in the south-east corner of Home Park has cost around £1.4 million and opened in August.
The Green Taverners Suite is now the plush new home for the FanFests, but it is also available for bookings for all sorts of non-matchday events.
Two of the Green Taverners’ leading lights – father and son Gary and Liam McGuire – have talked to Plymouth Live about the project, the challenges that had to be overcome and their hopes for the future.
How hard has it been getting to this point with the Green Taverners Suite?
Liam: It has been very, very difficult. A lot of time has gone into this facility, especially the week leading up to our opening.
I personally did 103 hours that week, and Dad probably doubled that. It was very overwhelming and we are still riding that wave.
Gary: It wasn’t just about getting up to that day. I suppose the hard work was actually being carried out with the legalities of everything before we even started on the build itself. There were some minor delays.
It has been difficult to say the least, I suppose, but I think we are over the worst of it now.
We have had some great help and support along the way from local businessmen and tradesmen.
Liam: As difficult it has been, though, obviously this facility is far better than our last one and we are getting comfortable with aspects of it.
The kitchen isn’t up and running yet, but we have got an office, which we didn’t have before, we have got a boiler room, we have got service cupboards, we have got more storage.
That’s luxury. The fact that we can keep our stock in our fridges without being afraid that someone is going to slice through the tent and take a bottle of Bud.
I’m starting to feel comfortable with this facility but there is still a lot of work to do externally, and we are still not completely happy with the internal side of it.
There is some memorabilia and things going in downstairs. This facility is just going to improve and improve over the next 12 months.
That’s exactly what I have told our members. We are opening this facility because we have got to make money but it is a work in progress.
If you had known then what you know now, would you have committed to this project?
Liam: Seeing people’s reaction to it and how happy it has made them, it’s hard to say no.
It has been very difficult but it’s definitely a learning experience. I’m not sure it’s something I want to go through again, but I do think our membership has come closer together.
Gary: If we were being totally honest, no we probably wouldn’t go through it all again. It has been a struggle and it hasn’t quite gone the way we have seen it.
Now we are the end of it, and you are seeing people’s enjoyment of the facility, it has made it all worthwhile.
Could I have done without that two years? Yeah, I could have done without it, but we are evolving and I’m sure it will get better every week.
I’m getting more and more comfortable with it. I don’t think the hard work is over with yet. There is still quite a bit to be done.
Liam: I think if that question was asked a couple of months ago it would have been a straight up ‘No’.
At this stage it’s probably a ‘maybe’ and I think in six months’ time it may be a straight ‘yes’.
What was the hardest part of it all?
Gary: Probably the legalities of things, having to change your total ethos around the Green Taverners and then having to set up as a co-operative.
Sorting out the lease was a minefield to us. We had three different solicitors working on it.
We had the club solicitors, our solicitors and an independent solicitor, who oversaw everything.
Still, you are going to find little bits and pieces where the interpretation of the lease is seen differently between two parties.
On the actual building side of it we had a 12-18 week delay because of a problem we had with the roof.
We went for a particular finish on the roof. We were swayed on cost, and as soon as it went wrong it all had to be put right, at the contractors’ expense.
It was all put right and we have got a far more substantial roof, but the one thing you can’t put back is time, and time is your money.
Liam: It’s the knock-on effect of that, though. CTI Power, for example, are also working for Plymouth Argyle doing all their electrics and things like that (in the redeveloped Mayflower Grandstand)
They give Plymouth Argyle timelines and we had to pull them away. We didn’t want to delay that build but we had to get our own up and running as well. That was just one small complication.
Gary: We have just given all our books and paperwork to our accountant now, who is doing a summary on the build and where we are moving forward, and make sure our business plan is all up to where it needs to be.
We are pretty confident that we have hit our targets, we are inside of budget and that we have probably put another 15 to 20 per cent extra onto the original costings and still come out on top.
We are happy on the cost side of it, and I think we are more than happy on the standard of the building.
I think from what we originally envisioned it being, to what it is now, I think everybody would agree the building is fantastic. It has been built to last.
The Green Taverners Suite has a membership of 300, which sold out in less than 24 hours
So what is the total cost do you reckon?
Gary: We estimate around about £1.4m for the total build cost, but like I say we put about £120,000-£150,000 worth of improvements into the building to foolproof us for later on.
Things like the balcony going on, the upgrading of the windows, we have upgraded the toilet facilities, we have double-boarded all the walls first.
So if somebody decides he wants to hit the wall, the wall will win.
It costs you £15,000-£20,000 to do something as simple as that, but it does foolproof you for years to come.
Has all that cost been self-funded?
Gary: We got £750,000 as an investment from supporters – friends of the Green Taverners.
That gets paid off at the original agreement of five per cent of annum with the capital turned in year five.
We had £100,000 from the GTs that we put into the build.
The remainder then has been made up with non-investment contracts, cheap deals that we have got from local businesses.
That gets put on the end of year five. That’s when contractors get paid off.
I would probably say 10-15 per cent has been made from goodwill, people donating their time, equipment and materials.
We set a £750,000 cap on borrowing when the building was going to be £1m.
When we increased the size from 650 square metres to just over 1,000 square metres for the whole of the building, we never extended our borrowing.
That has meant the end of the job has been quite tight but we are seeing our way through it and we think by Christmas we will be on an even keel.
And the lease is five years?
Gary: The lease is five years, but if we are not quite where we need to be with the business plan we can extend for two years.
At the moment Argyle are using the downstairs for their matchday guests and corporate hospitality. That will end soon presumably and then you will the whole of the building to yourselves?
Gary: We hope so, once Argyle move over to their build (the Mayflower Grandstand).
There may be some interim uses that they may need it for, as in concerts and things like that, but we are hoping there will be an agreement in place where we can move in and use it as a supporters’ bar from January 1 maybe, onwards, depending on how their timescales go with the grandstand.
What has the feedback been like to the new building? Are the FanFest justs the same as before, or different?
Liam: People are amazed at this facility and that’s what has made it all worth it to be honest.
We have had better feedback than we have ever had, in terms of our staff and what we are producing.
Gary: It’s all good. We have extended our beer supplies and our spirits, the kitchen is opening is soon. I don’t think we have lost the atmosphere of the FanFest.
We are getting more people through the doors. We have got a full membership of 300, which sold out within inside of 24 hours.
We have now got 300 people waiting on a membership ready for downstairs. If we had built for 1,000 it still wouldn’t have been big enough.
After games, we are getting a lot more people back in than we have ever had.
Just for an example, when the Grimsby game was postponed we had 300 people in the room for about four hours.
At seven o’clock at night there was still 160-170 people in the room. It was absolutely phenomenal.
What would Bill Kilroy (one of the Green Taverners’ co-founders, who passed away in 2016) make of this place?
Gary: It was his idea to build something like this. When the original plans came out (for the redevelopment of the grandstand), Bill said ‘We can do that better’ and we went from there.
We originally bought the old club shop to turn that into a supporters’ bar.
How much interest has there been in holding non-matchday events in the Green Taverners Suite?
Liam: The events are coming in thick and fast, probably on average three events a week, which is more than we have ever been used to.
So much so we have employed Toni, my wife, as our events and marketing manager, who has come from The Duke Cornwall, where she was five years.
She was the function and events assistant for two and a half years and was then promoted to being a wedding co-ordinator, and looking at the marketing for weddings as well.
We also want to open up downstairs as a cafe or bar eventually once we have got the capacity to do so and we have got the infrastructure and the fundamentals in place.
Gary: We were confident that once we got the doors open we were going to be busy, but we are getting now we envisaged would be end of year one, beginning of year two.
We didn’t know we were going to hit the ground like this.
Liam: I don’t think we fully understood the fact that this building is new and people are interested, and this is without any form of advertising by the way.
Gary: Toni has only been here for two weeks and her professionalism is what we need now.
We are amateurs and we are learning as we go along, but we haven’t done a bad job so far.
We seem to muscle our way over the line now and again. What Toni is adding is a bit of finesse and professionalism to it.
Liam: Toni is contactable by
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. If you have an event, it’s a great new building and people can pop up and see us.
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Thu Nov 14, 2019 5:07 pm
