Full Steam Ahead for LNER
Bootham Crescent
How York City have ended up at a sport , leisure and retail facility some three miles north of York is a complex story , the roots of which can be traced back to 1999 when the ownership of the Bootham Crescent ground was hived off to a separate holding company called Bootham Crescent Holdings . Both the ground and the club were put up for sale in 2001 , with Huntington Stadium , the comparatively new home of York RLFC , slated as a potential replacement for Bootham Crescent . Huntington , or South Ryedale Stadium , as it was also known , featured a 760 seater stand and a substantial covered terrace , but was surrounded by a running track , and was some way off Football League standard . In the event , a £ 2 million loan from the Football Stadia Improvement Fund enabled the club to buy back Bootham Crescent in 2004 , the same year that York City were relegated from the Football League to the Football Conference after a stay of 75 years . A stipulation of the FSIF loan was that York City needed to identify a site for a new stadium by 2007 and have secured planning permission by 2009 , with the loan reverting to a grant once the new stadium was constructed . With the possibility of reconstructing Bootham Crescent in a more modern form being ruled out as unfeasible , the ground ’ s fate was now sealed , though it would be 15 years before York City finally moved out .
With the City of York Council having been broadly supportive throughout , four sites for a new stadium were considered , with a redevelopment of Huntington Stadium at Monks Cross finally being rubber-stamped by councillors as the best option in 2012 . It had been a torturous process , which still had many years to run . One of the conditions insisted by the Football Stadia Improvement Fund was that the new stadium should be all-seater , and initially a 6,000 capacity was set . This was later upgraded to 8,500 places , which tallied with the modern Bootham Crescent capacity , but with 5,000 more seats .
Monks Cross , an area of former farm land three miles to the north of York , was opened as a retail park in 1998 . Situated alongside the retail park was the already existing Huntington Stadium , home since 1989 to the subsequently reformed and renamed York City
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