PRIDE PARK

City Challenge was one of the biggest tests ever faced by councillors and officials in Derby. This included transforming contaminated wasteland which dwarfed the size of the city centre. In the autumn of 1992, Derby City Council signed up for City Challenge, paving the way for Pride Park, Derby's biggest ever regeneration of a brown field site. But the idea did not just happen overnight. Behind all the headlines, smiles and handshakes, there have been problems which could have killed the project, some of which have not been revealed until now. Council officials had already identified the site, now known as Pride Park, as being an area that could be redeveloped. But they also knew that Chaddesden Sidings and the old gasworks could not come into fruitful use without significant public subsidy. The land was in three ownerships - British Gas, British Rail Property Board and ABBT (formerly British Rail Engineering Limited).

It lay redundant and blighted by its previous uses, which included being a municipal tip for thousands of tons of Derby's rubbish, plus contamination from old industry. There was poor access - Deadman's Lane, a Bailey Bridge from the Sidings across the Derwent, which was used for taking gravel from the river, and access for vans via a lane under the arches near the railway station. There were problems, but it had potential. "It was a problem waiting to be solved," said Michael Foote, the council's director of corporate services and one of the select few who has been involved with Pride Park since its inception. Then the Government announced the second round of its City Challenge competition - 11 authorities had won money in the first round and now another 22 could bid against each other for £37.5m of cash to be spent over the next five years on regeneration.

It was no easy task - even Birmingham missed out on the first round so the city council knew it faced a tough time. But the then council leader Nick Brown gave the go-ahead to try for it. The Government Office for the East Midlands even acknowledged that it was an exciting project but difficult to deliver. Although the Government had agreed to the project, the city council was given a deadline to acquire the land. "On the open market, the land was worth only a nominal sum because of the problems with the industrial contamination and access," said Mr Foote. "But the landowners knew that public money was being made available and they wanted a return. Both sides had something which the other wanted. There was intense pressure to do a deal in a short period of time, otherwise we would have lost £37.5m of investment and the site could have still been undeveloped today without the businesses and jobs.

There were also other issues, such as who would be responsible for decontaminating the land." With chief estates officer Hazel Schurch, Mr Foote concluded the tough negotiations with the landowners. "The pressure was immense and it went right to the wire," he said. A deal was done and so started the process to transform the site. But that was the first of many headaches over the years. On April Fools' Day, 1993, Derby Pride Limited officially came into being, but those working on the scheme found it no joking matter. Most of the first few months were spent exploring the overgrown, derelict site and wondering how to tackle the cocktail of chemicals that lay beneath the ground. "The big problem was that nobody knew the full extent of the contamination which had accumulated over 160 years since the locomotive works started operating there," said project manager Gethyn Davies.

A total of 800 soil samples were taken and each one was tested for 22 contaminants, ranging from oils and tars to heavy pollutants and even low-level radiation. Experts picked out the worst spots for contamination and it was eventually realised that half the site - made up of the former gas works and the tip - was significantly more contaminated than the rest. The solution was to erect a watertight bentonite wall which uses panels sunk to a depth of 10 metres below the surface and encloses the most contaminated parts to prevent polluted water from spreading. At three kilometres long - almost two miles - it was the largest of its kind in Europe. The wall was completed in December, 1994, at a cost of £1.57m. Despite the earthmovers and lorries sighted on the 180-acre site, contaminants have stayed on site and been dealt with.

"No contaminated soil has been taken off Pride Park and dumped on someone else's back yard," said Mr Davies. "It is still being stored in two waste repositories. When Pride Park is finished, we will have 80,000 cubic metres of contaminated soil - enough to fill the pitch at Pride Park Stadium to a depth of about 30 ft - stored, capped with clay and grassed over." Pride Park has its own water treatment plant. Because rainwater contained within the wall could rise and overflow if not checked, it is pumped out to the treatment plant at the edge of the site. The works take out the contaminants, which are eaten by bacteria, and the clean water is pumped into the Derwent. This means that contamination levels within the cut-off wall will be reduced.

Over the last five years, the plant has treated more than 2.25 million cubic metres of water, the equivalent of filling the gala pool at Queen's Leisure Centre 3,956 times. Another safety measure is a trench to take away methane gas from the former tip where Pride Park stadium now lies. It houses a number of venting pipes to release methane gas safely into the atmosphere. And, in a re-cycling initiative, buildings that were demolished were crushed and used as hardcore for roads. Thousands of trees and shrubs were planted to landscape the site. While there were problems on the ground to sort out, there was another headache for the city council and Derby Pride - selling plots for development.

They had to overcome the psychological fears of potential purchasers. Britain had been in recession in the early 90s and there were jitters in the commercial property market. "There were other sites in the region competing for purchasers which did not carry all the baggage that we did and some could even offer financial incentives," said city council director of corporate services Michael Foote. "Basically, buyers and their backers wanted us to guarantee there would be no problems with the land, or to bail them out if there were. We looked at insurance premiums but they were prohibitively high. In the end, we negotiated with Arup, the authors of our reclamation strategy, who have given restricted indemnity on the most contaminated sites against any problems from reclamation."

Mr Foote said that all land had been sold at market value without any subsidy from council taxpayers. He revealed that so far, the council had received just over £20m from land deals. The total cost of Pride Park - buying the land, reclaiming it, and putting in the infrastructure, including roads, services and sewers - has been almost £50m. Of the £37.5m given by the Government to Derby Pride, £17.5m has been spent on Pride Park, including purchasing and reclaiming the land and creating the bridge from the Wyvern Centre. The remaining £20m from the Government grant went into community projects. Another £10m of Government cash funded items such as the flyover from Station Approach, and the rest of the money needed to pay for Pride Park is coming from land sales. This will pay for the last access, the Wilmorton Link.

Mr Foote has now revealed that the original purchase price for the land was £5m, but officials managed to renegotiate with British Gas a year later. This resulted in a £1m reduction in the price because the cost of cleaning up the heavily-contaminated land owned by British Gas was more expensive than originally thought. But the maths did not always add up. Mr Foote revealed that at one time, the deficit on projected income against spending was as much as £9m. Officials carried out a major review, which led to a cutback on spending. Although there is some retail element at JJB, David Lloyd and Pride Park Stadium, it was always council policy that there would be no stand-alone shops. But the authority did allow car showrooms and restaurants, which also attract high income. "At the end of the day, we will break even," Mr Foote said.

But he admitted it had been a long slog. "You can never relax when you are dealing with a difficult site like this," he said. "We never know when a problem can occur that would land a large bill on the council's doorstep. But fortunately, we have managed to overcome everything so far and make Pride Park a great success." Ray Cowlishaw, city council chief executive, says Pride Park is a "magnificent example of regeneration of a highly-polluted brownfield site that has turned into a showpiece of investment and economic development. It's something that the city can be very, very proud of," he said. The bid to host the Millennium Exhibition demonstrated that Derby could compete on a national stage.

"The fact that we came runners-up was, indeed, a blessing in disguise," he said. "It's the best third place that we have ever got," he joked. Mr Cowlishaw also praised Derby County's integration with businesses. "The way in which the club has developed the stadium has been a magnificent example of how a football stadium can be integrated into the business community. Some had feared that it couldn't," he said. Former city council leader Nick Brown said the authority's vision at the time had been vindicated. "Pride Park is a great success, but it's been a long, hard road," he said.

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