John Nelms open to new Dundee stadium share

John Nelms is open to sharing Dundee’s new Camperdown Park project with another club.

But only if they pick up the phone first.

The Dundee managing director is hoping to see a planning permission in principle application for the club’s new stadium get the green light soon.

The original date slated for a council hearing, however, has been delayed with no new date confirmed.

And Transport Scotland want more time to evaluate the potential traffic impact on the Kingsway.

Dens chairman Tim Keyes and Nelms are pushing on with the project in the meantime and have released a spectacular fly-through video of what the stadium will look like when complete.

And Nelms took to The Warm-Up podcast to discuss the plans among other things.

In a round of quick-fire questions, the American was asked if he’d be open to sharing the stadium with another club, most likely rivals Dundee United.

Nelms replied: “Sure.

“My phone rings!”

Nelms, along Dee owner – and fellow Texan – Tim Keyes, took a flight to meet United custodian Mark Ogren back in 2018 to establish a personal relationship with the Minnesotan.

Nelms also revealed that he and Keyes initially looked at St Mirren when aiming to invest in a football club, where fellow podcast guest Brian Caldwell – now at Motherwell – was chief executive.

Tim Keyes (right) joins John Nelms and Dundee media man Pete McEleney at the open training session. Image: David Young — Tim Keyes (right) with John Nelms (centre) and Dee media man Pete McEleny (left) at an open training session this summer. Image: David Young

“We looked at about eight clubs – England, Scotland, Holland, Belgium – and Dundee kept coming to the top of the table on a risk-reward scenario,” Nelms said.

And asked about the number of American owners in Scottish football, Nelms added: “When Mark [Ogren] took over at United, Tim and I flew up to meet him in his hometown and to introduce ourselves, let him know what he’s in for.

“Tim and I have owned the club for nearly 11 years now. I met Brian [Caldwell] just before that when we looked at St Mirren.

“The investment for us was to bring some business acumen to football.

“We’re very patient people, we are still here after 11 years and we take small steps.

“What we thought we could do was take a football club like Dundee that was struggling financially and put some business acumen into it, put investment into it, build up the academy and infrastructure as we’re doing now.

“And at the end of the day you’ll have something.

“We’ve made a lot of mistakes on the way and we’ve learned from those mistakes.

“We think we’ve built something much bigger than we started with.”