Dome firm pays £48m for Wembley Arena site

Quintain, the developer of the site of the Millennium Dome, is to take on another scheme with a troubled history, announcing yesterday that it had bought the land surrounding Wembley Stadium.

The company plans to build a mixed-use development, providing up to 4 million sq ft of accommodation, including about 2,000 homes, making it one of the biggest brownfield projects in London. Analysts estimate the completed development, which does not include the stadium, could be worth £500m. Lord Rogers, the architect, has been brought in to masterplan the scheme.

Quintain paid £48m to buy the 22-acre site from Wembley plc, the company that sold the stadium to the Football Association in 1999. The Quintain acquisition also includes the Wembley Arena, Conference Centre and Exhibition Halls. These will be retained, at least for the foreseeable future.

Nick Shattock, Quintain's property director, said the development was viable, whether or not Wembley Stadium was ever rebuilt. The FA has so far failed to begin redeveloping the stadium, which is no longer is use.

"We want the stadium to go ahead, there are significant synergies between the two [schemes]. But if it didn't, the fundamentals of our acquisition are not affected. We would carry on regardless," he said.

The divestment allows Wembley plc to focus on its leisure business, which is based on greyhound racing tracks. The company's biggest asset is a track on Rhode Island, in the US, which has 1,700 "one-armed bandit" machines.

Wembley plc has six tracks in the UK, with a flagship one at Wimbledon. Once the UK gaming laws are reformed, the group hopes to put in additional gambling or bingo facilities at its tracks here. Mark Elliott, finance director at Wembley plc, said: "This represents the final stage of our transformation from a conglomerate to a focused gaming company."