Chelsea: Club bid for Battersea site for new stadium

English Premier League side Chelsea FC, who are in the final of the UEFA Champions League, have bid for the Battersea Power Station site as they have been looking at options for a new bigger stadium then their current home Stamford Bridge in Southwest London for years.

Earlier the Blues had been looking at the Earls Court exhibition centre, here an article of mine about it from November 2010 ( FC Chelsea: Bye Bye Stamford Bridge? ) with now the Battersea Power Station site a more likely location for a new 60,000 seater capacity stadium, if the club is able to buy the property which is not too far away from their current location.

Chelsea's problem is that Stamford Bridge, their home since 1905, has a capacity of just under 42,000 which is only the eighth largest by capacity venue in the English Premiership. The club losses millions in revenues due to this fact.

But Chelsea have other problems as well then any move could run into opposition from fans, then Stamford Bridge is owned by the Chelsea Pitch Owners (CPO), a group of fans who acquired the freehold in 1993 to protect the ground from developers and last year they did not want to sell the ground back to their club.

Announcing a bid for the 39-acre site with property development partner Almacantar, the club said they had not made a final decision to leave Stamford Bridge and that they were not the only party interested in the site. However, Chelsea set out ambitious plans for a new ground that would incorporate the power station's key features.

And that they hope besides the price for the plot would give them a new home in the future.