Dear Supporter

Welcome home.

What a journey it has been.

Eighteen years ago we embarked on what has been a monumental and, at times – I don’t mind saying – almost overwhelming, task. The financial, operational, logistical, planning and resourcing it has taken has been immense. There is a reason massive projects like this are seldom undertaken by private entities, particularly ones of our modest size.

It was 2001 when we realised that a key part of making this club one of the top 10 clubs in the world was building an increased capacity stadium. You simply cannot be a big club with a 36,000-seater stadium.

We did not own all the land, even on the existing White Hart Lane (WHL) site. The first land transaction took place in 2002 and between then and right up until last month we set about assembling all of what we called the Northumberland Development Project (NDP) site – now an accumulative 20 acres – the result of more than 90 individual property transactions. We relocated nearly 80 businesses and I’m pleased to say the majority chose to remain in the Borough of Haringey.

The intention was always to stay in Tottenham – we were diverted at one point, largely due to hitting brick walls locally, but not for long.

The riots happened in the summer of 2011 and we knew we had to help rebuild our neighbourhood. That’s when we sat with local, regional and national government to get a commitment to focus on Tottenham and to invest alongside the Club. To date we have seen more than £100m in transport infrastructure improvements provided by Transport for London and the Greater London Authority. There is, of course, still much more to do locally.

We had stumbling blocks all through the process – not least of which was a protracted compulsory purchase order process to complete the site acquisition. It caused a delay of nearly two years – however, every time we had an issue or a delay we have looked to use it positively.

On this occasion we used the time to challenge our original designs and to push the boundaries on architectural aspects – this saw a substantial redesign of the stadium and the associated developments – so we ended up with something far better – there is a reason for everything in life.

We also did not want to spend more than one season away from Tottenham. That meant we had the added complication of demolishing part of the existing WHL stadium whilst still playing there.

We reached agreement to play at Wembley for a season, with a fall-back that we could be there for longer, although that was something we really did not want to have happen.