Ards and Bangor may continue to share stadium

Bangor football club has confirmed that it will continue to consider sharing a new stadium with Ards football club.

At last month’s general meeting, officials at the First Division Bangor agreed that the stadium sharing option must be fully explored before a final decision is made.

Currently, the two clubs have been forced to share Bangor’s Clandeboye ground, following Ards’ three-year long nomadic period that begun when it left its Castlereagh Park stadium in 2001.

Planning proposals have long been submitted for a new 4,000-seat Ards stadium at Portaferry Road which would include a leisure centre, conference and banqueting facilities, a restaurant and a 50-bedroom hotel.

However, plans have dragged on and Ards are now keen to receive assurance that its £9m stadium plans will go ahead.

Earlier this year, the troubled scheme suffered another blow when the company backing the development, Stadia, went into receivership.

All now depends on Scarborough Development Group, which is in negotiations to buy several of Stadia’s unfinished projects.

Even if Scarborough does obtain the Portaferry Road development, it would not mean that the new ground would definitely go through, as Scarborough has announced that it would still conduct their individual assessment into the viability of the scheme.

Meanwhile, Bangor will be force to leave their current shared home, Clandeboye Park, by 2006.

As Bangor has no independent plans to build a stadium, the possibility of sharing one with Ards looks more than likely. Details: www.ardsfc.co.uk