Ransom Strip

I don't know how many have seen this which was posted on Facebook yesterday by James Carlin

Message from the Board to supporters about match day parking for men's matches at Twerton Park going forwards:
"The club confirms that it did bid to buy back the “ransom” strip in the recent auction of the two “lots” of the former Greenacre owned land – The High Street properties and the “ransom” strip.  We weren’t successful in our bid for the ransom strip and the properties sold to different bidders.
I’m sure you will appreciate that the board can’t always comment on everything we do in advance, as clearly there are commercial sensitivities to some aspects of our actions.
We are in daily communication with the new owners of the ransom strip and hope to talk to the other party soon as it will be important to co-ordinate what we do with our land/redevelopment and what happens “next door.” The new owners of the 'ransom strip" have started to fence off their land and we understand that they plan to charge for car parking.  Please be aware when you make your matchday travel plans that this will mean that there will be no parking available in the Bath City FC owned spaces at Twerton Park as our players, the match officials, the opposition and our car park season ticket holders will use all the available spaces. The overflow at Curo will operate as usual." Bath City FC Board

I did a bit of Googling and was able to find out that it was actually sold for £70000 - it was sold by the receivers (the various Greenacre companies having gone to the wall) but there was no indication of who the buyer was.

In my opinion it would have been better to crowdfund for the purchase of this land than all the other occasions when the fans have been asked for financial support.
Oh well we'll just have to make the 4G pitch work very hard (and presumably that will also require initial crowdfunding).

The problem with doing a public crowdfunder is that the club would have shown it's hand prior to the auction. What I find strange is that the new buyer of the high street didn't also buy the second lot. It's not a situation that happens to me very often(!) but I'd imagine that if you've got £950,000 then an extra £70,000 doesn't matter too much.

Yes that occurred to me too. You would have thought it was even more valuable to them.
I was thinking with the crowdfunding the club would need to get pledges that covered whatever they bid. And there would be no need to reveal how much had been raised.