Hereford United chairman David Keyte has said that the 250 year lease deal for Edgar Street from Herefordshire Council is crucial to the future of the football club. The agreement has come after delays partly caused by the council changing their solicitors.
"We've been battling with that for about eighteen months since we put the money on the table for the Richardsons to clear their debt," Keyte told BBC Hereford and Worcester.
"At that point we did get the leases back to the football club on a thirty year lease.
"We wanted to extend that to become attractive to developers and it's finally gone through this week.
"So we now have a 250 year option should any developers wish to come on board.
"We've had drawings done at both ends (of the ground).
"It's fairly common knowledge that a hotel in the city is an ideal for the council and we're prepared to try to get someone to develope that at the Blackfriars Street end.
"The cattle market project's stuttering hasn't helped and the financial climate is difficult and it may, ironically, be that the Meadow End moves forward before Blackfriars Street.
"We have a good indication from the city planners that they will accept residential development at that end and we've got three interested parties that have been around to look at the site.
"It's probably eighteen months, two years away. These things seem to take a long time but they are essential to the improved future of the club.
"The football club has an opportunity, probably just a one-off opportunity, to get a lump sum of money in, for somebody else to come in and take over the ground that has previously been fairly scrubby ends to Edgar Street.
"It's almost like a double life - come into a football club and access everything.
"In my view I would only give credit to Graham Turner that on the financial base of Hereford United he kept this football club at a higher level in football terms then the finances warranted, at a cost of being unable to develope the fabric of the football ground.
"But on a playing front, as we know, he's the best manager in lower league football in the country and by chance he landed in Hereford 17 years ago and Hereford United had the benefit of his football managerial skills.
"What we have had now is two years of, let's say, the average football managers efforts and of that same low finacial base we have struggled.