Inside Chelsea’s wild plan to build futuristic 60,000 seat stadium on the ROOF of Waterloo Station
CHELSEA once hatched a wild plan to build a futuristic stadium on the ROOF of Waterloo Station, it has been claimed.
The Blues have long sought to expand Stamford Bridge, which has been their home since 1905.
Roman Abramovich tried and failed several times to get plans off the ground.
And SunSport revealed new Chelsea owner Todd Boehly remains hopeful of renovating their west London stadium to the sum of £1billion.
The decision to remain by Fulham Broadway means the Blues face ground-sharing, potentially with a rival Premier League side, for up to six years.
Yet that has still been deemed preferable to moving elsewhere, with the vacant site at Earl’s Court previously considered.
Former owner Abramovich toyed with several locations during his time at the helm.
The Russian famously mulled a controversial switch to the former abandoned Battersea Power Station, now home to luxury flats and bars.
He also eyed White City before it was turned into Westfield shopping centre.
And now it’s been claimed Abramovich even considered building a stadium at Waterloo in 2007.
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But in typical madcap fashion, the oligarch envisioned it on the roof of the busy central London train station.
A property developer told the Athletic how Abramovich envisioned a mega 60,000-seater arena propped up on columns sitting atop the existing train line.
It would have filled in the space left by the Eurostar, which swapped Waterloo for Kings Cross that same year.
And Abramovich planned on funding the project by also building high-rise flats around the stadium.
However, the grandiose scheme was abandoned when it became clear how costly it would be.
Robert Kennedy, a director of Homes Miller, said: “The Eurostar was leaving Waterloo for St Pancras, so suddenly you had the biggest open space in that corner of London above Waterloo Station.”
Kennedy, whose company worked on the Oval, Murrayfield and the King Power Stadium, added: “You could drop columns down through the existing train lines, and build a platform, and then put a 60,000-seat stadium above it.
“They were going to put high-rise flats around the outside to pay for it.
“But the whole package ended up being a wee bit expensive.”