The Future
Fairfield is run by a self-financing charity. It was in receipt of an operating grant from Croydon Council of nearly £1m up until 2005 when the grant was removed completely due to financial difficulties at the Council.
However Croydon Council, the freeholder of the land, has had various plans to refurbish Fairfield over the years but none of these plans have ever come to fruition. The latest development scheme to fall through involved the development of College Green Next to Fairfield. This was this latest in a long line of grand plans for Croydon to come to nothing.
The long-term commercial viability of the Fairfield was threatened by the local council's proposed development of an 12,500 seater arena on the Croydon Gateway site next to East Croydon Station. The council-backed scheme included a multi-use arena that would target the same income-generating markets that keep Fairfield alive today. On 30 July 2008 the Arena Public Inquiry finally concluded that an Arena was not financially viable. Planning permission and the compulsory purchase of the land were rejected. Croydon Council continues to seek an Arena.
Read more about this topic: Fairfield Halls
Famous quotes containing the word future:
“The future is just as much a condition of the present as is the past. “What shall be and must be is the ground of that which is.””
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy’s edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create “one world.” Instead of one world, we have “star wars,” and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet’s dead.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)