Tottenham Hotspur’s booming new stadium, although snagged by delays and escalating costs, has taken formidable shape across the old White Hart Lane site, teams of hard-hatted workers pressing on towards setting a new opening date. Spurs’ plans to recoup the £850m construction costs include vaulting revenues from the 62,062-seat stadium itself and all its hospitality packages, two NFL games and six concerts a year, the “Tottenham Experience” visitors’ centre with Europe’s largest football club shop, a 180-bed hotel and 579 apartments in four blocks for which the club has planning permission.

Already completed are regeneration extras Spurs have helped construct, as agreed with the London Borough of Haringey in an area blighted by severe deprivation and the 2011 riots: a large Sainsbury’s supermarket, a new sixth-form college, 256 new homes officially classed as “affordable” and a new primary school.

Directly opposite all this rebuilding and activity is Tottenham High Road west, a densely packed neighbourhood of shops, small industrial estates and the Love Lane council estate, which is in a wholly contrasting standoff. Here, Spurs are in furious disagreement with Haringey council over development plans; small businesses protest they are being forced out, and insecure residents live in fear of the future because of the borough’s severe housing shortage, with 10,000 households on the council’s waiting list and 3,000 families in temporary accommodation.

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The Guardian revealed in 2013 that Spurs had been buying up fistfuls of properties in the High Road west area, including industrial units, shops – even flats dotted about. The properties were transferred to the ownership of TH Property Ltd, a company registered in the Bahamas, the offshore tax haven where the club’s majority owner, Joe Lewis, is based. Local garage and other small business owners, told they faced compulsory purchase orders (CPOs) if they did not relocate to make way for a new commercial and residential masterplan, assumed Spurs were planning to make further fortunes by being centrally involved in the redevelopment.

The club’s chairman, Daniel Levy, had emphasised the need for further regeneration in a 2012 joint statement with Haringey council’s then leader, after announcing the club would remain in Tottenham following the failure to beat West Ham to the Olympic Stadium site. But since then, and a memorandum of understanding document agreeing to develop the area together, Spurs and the council have arrived at different visions for the redevelopment. That has infuriated Spurs, who argue the council has diverged from the memorandum of understanding, which stated the club would take the lead. Asked about this, a council spokesperson did not disagree, but pointed out the document was not legally binding and left the council free to vary future decisions.

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The council says its plan was developed after extensive consultation with residents, to have “far-reaching benefits” for the local community: 2,500 new homes – including 191 council homes and 750 classed as “affordable” – new shops, business space and leisure activities, a new public park, square and modern library. Spurs argue the scheme is unambitious, comparing it unfavourably with the prestigious new developments at Kings Cross.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Daniel Levy, the Tottenham Hotspur chairman. Photograph: Clive Rose/Getty Images

A Spurs spokesperson told the Guardian: “The club is concerned that the current levels of aspiration for High Road west (centred on a replacement library and district energy centre) fall way short of the council’s own stated objective of creating ‘London’s next premier leisure destination,’ and will not deliver the scale or quality of regeneration the area and local residents deserve.”

The council rejects that assessment, saying in response: “The proposals for High Road west reflect the aspirations of those living in the area. The council does not believe that this makes the scheme unambitious.”

In 2015, against Spurs’ fundamental opposition, the council took the decision not to entrust the club with the development and held a competitive process to appoint a developer, which resulted in the selection of Lendlease in September 2017.

Since then nothing much has happened, which has deepened the insecurity of the small businesses and residents in the Love Lane estate’s 297 homes, still slated for demolition. Outrage among many was sparked by the initial masterplan, which envisaged the whole council estate being knocked down, creating a clear walkway from White Hart Lane train station to Spurs’ gleaming new stadium. Secure council tenants have gradually moved out and been rehoused, so the council has moved in families who were in temporary accommodation, a precarious step up from homelessness. Paul Burnham, of the Haringey Defend Council Housing campaign, believes this is the largest number of people ever moved into housing already scheduled for demolition.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An aerial view of the redevelopment around White Hart Lane in October 2018. The Love Lane estate is at the top of the image, with Tottenham High Road located between the estate and the stadium Photograph: David Goddard/Getty Images

Mark Panton, an academic at Birkbeck College who has chronicled the regeneration saga throughout, and with Amanda Lillywhite produced a graphic book “Tottenham’s Trojan Horse?”, hosted Love Lane residents for a day this summer.

“There was a real sense of fear,” Panton says. “People are watching the stadium go up, but their homes are due for demolition and they have no idea what the future holds.”

Despite the council’s 2015 change of plan Tottenham Hotspur or other Joe Lewis-owned companies have continued to buy more properties on High Road west. In April 2016 a company called Renland Ltd bought a small industrial estate known as the Goods Yard – for £4.05m, according to Land Registry records. Renland is a Spurs company; its two directors are Levy and the club’s finance director Matthew Collecott. In turn, the company is owned by Tottenham Developments Ltd, which is not a UK-registered company. The club did not confirm where that company is registered but says the transfers of property to Bahamas-based companies are not being done to avoid UK taxes on capital gains or profits made from developing the sites.

In April this year a company called Stanhope Tottenham Ltd bought another large site, on 867-869 High Road west, formerly occupied by the B & M supermarket. The price paid was £14.55m. Stanhope Tottenham is a partnership between the developer Stanhope and Spurs companies; Levy and Collecott are directors along with three Stanhope executives. Levy and Joe Lewis, who gives his address as Nassau, the Bahamas, are both substantial shareholders.

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These further property purchases demonstrate that Spurs are digging in for a share in the development and its profits. A club source said they do not believe the council can CPO Spurs’ land because the club will argue they are intending to develop it in the way envisaged in the masterplan. As development has stalled, Spurs have even made their own rival application to the Lendlease plans, to build 330 homes, with retail and leisure outlets, on the Goods Yard site. The council had not responded to it by August and Spurs have appealed against that inaction, a dispute which will be heard by the Planning Inspectorate. The Spurs spokesperson set out the club’s position: “The club remains open to partnership, working with Lendlease or any other developer and the new council administration, and is determined to ensure that the regeneration benefits arising from its investment are maximised for the benefit of the local area.”

The council says its plans are subject to more consultation and will change; specifically its spokesperson said: “The Love Lane estate is not being demolished to create a walkway to the stadium” and “new council homes at council rents” will be built on the site. The council also says it will aim to relocate some businesses within the new development and help others to move if that is not practical. Following new rules introduced by London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, the council must ballot residents on its plans, a vote due to be held in the spring.

We've always lived around here; but we're worried we could be moved out of London, to anywhere Tash Bonner, local resident

Yet the years of delay and dispute have caused many residents and businesses to fear losing out catastrophically. One Love Lane resident, Tash Bonner, 24, a recording artist and music business student at BIMM college, has lived in a Love Lane flat for four years with his mother and younger sister, 19. They ended up homeless, he said, after living in a rented house for 11 years, then in three different temporary addresses, before landing in the Love Lane estate.

“It’s been tricky, a lot of insecurity and stress,” Bonner said. “We’ve always lived around here; but we’re worried we could be moved out of London, to anywhere. It’s making life harder, it’s very stressful for my Mum; there is so much uncertainty.”

Faruk Tepeyurt, who runs Solmaz, an interior design company, and represents the businesses on the Peacock industrial estate, believes they are being set up to receive too little money for moving because the masterplan earmarks the site as a green space, not lucrative residential apartments. The old B & M site borders DW General Wood Machinists, a thriving 70-year-old family joinery firm which employs 20 people. Its proprietor, Brian Dossett, said it is well known Spurs are buying land in the area but he didn’t understand why, because everybody assumes Spurs will be subject to the same council CPO threat as the small businesses.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The site of Tottenham’s new ground, with redevelopment underway, taken in 2013. The billboard advert promises a ‘vibrant area 365 days a year’ as well as ‘new jobs, new shops, new homes’. Photograph: Jonny Weeks/Guardian

The past years have been highly stressful, Dossett said, as he faces removal from the area with no replacement site identified: “What else can you be but in limbo?” he said.

Reverend Paul Nicolson, a veteran anti-poverty campaigner who lives in the area, has reported the plight of families in the Love Lane estate to the UN Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, describing as “life-crushing” their experience of living in temporary accommodation in London.

Famously the Hotspur Football Club was formed in 1882 by young boys from two local schools, who held their inaugural meeting under a streetlight on Tottenham High Road. The Premier League’s newest 21st-century stadium will be a monument to the sport’s phenomenal growth since those beginnings, while condensed around the same High Road are the startling inequalities and complexities of modern-day London.