OutByEaster? Posted January 5 Moderator Share Posted January 5 34 minutes ago, sharkyvilla said: Could they build the corners to connect the current North Stand to the Trinity and Witton stands, then remove the goalpost design and roof and put a new one on? It would be a bit of a cheap and nasty renovation, a bit like Heck's badge, but might be a cheaper fix without losing capacity. Removing the goalpost would be very tricky and very expensive - you'd need to find a way to keep the stand from falling down while the support wasn't there and that'd mean some sort of massive steel support structure, think of that goalpost as basically a wall with open sides, it's structurally integral to the stand - it'd probably be cheaper to knock it down and start again. Also, because there wasn't really very much room for the Doug Ellis Stand when it was built and there were restrictions because of the houses behind, it was built kinda forward of the other stands which ruins the lines for corners - you can't join onto it easily because it's edges are already in front of the Holte End and in front of the North Stand. It'd be horrible to link. You might be able to build a structure of hospitality boxes on the North Stand/Trinity corner but you'd need to know down what's there and I'm not sure the benefit would be worthwhile. It's a funny shaped thing Villa Park. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OutByEaster? Posted January 5 Moderator Share Posted January 5 6 hours ago, CVByrne said: Wait two or three years and look to expand other parts in the interim. Worth remembering that with the Euros, this isn't an option - the option is to do it now, to do it in the summer of 2025, or to revisit and seek new planning permission in 2029. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sharkyvilla Posted January 5 Share Posted January 5 47 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said: Removing the goalpost would be very tricky and very expensive - you'd need to find a way to keep the stand from falling down while the support wasn't there and that'd mean some sort of massive steel support structure, think of that goalpost as basically a wall with open sides, it's structurally integral to the stand - it'd probably be cheaper to knock it down and start again. Also, because there wasn't really very much room for the Doug Ellis Stand when it was built and there were restrictions because of the houses behind, it was built kinda forward of the other stands which ruins the lines for corners - you can't join onto it easily because it's edges are already in front of the Holte End and in front of the North Stand. It'd be horrible to link. You might be able to build a structure of hospitality boxes on the North Stand/Trinity corner but you'd need to know down what's there and I'm not sure the benefit would be worthwhile. It's a funny shaped thing Villa Park. It makes me wonder how even back in the 1970s a stand couldn't be designed and built with the possibility of expanding it reasonably easily in mind. The one thing I would say is if doing as I suggest would turn out just as expensive, at least we probably would have the stand open throughout, which Heck put so much emphasis on. It could well be impossible anyway and as you say, the layout of the stands would make it look awkward. My hope is we just delay a year, get a full season of CL football out the way to establish ourselves, then get on with the original plan in time for Euro 28. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hank Scorpio Posted January 5 Share Posted January 5 (edited) Taken from another thread but: What is the whole "Fortress Villa Park" bull I keep reading about as a reason not to build a new North stand. Look, we have some good home form. it will dip, as soon as its no longer a "Fortress" do you want the club to suddenly start the plans up again and build a new stand? You cannot base long term capital project decisions on a temporary factor such as how well a football team is performing at home. Long term we need more revenue. The new stand will bring that. We also may not finish top 4 this season, why is this seemingly almost assumed? If we miss CL do you want them to pivot and dust the plans off and start up again? It's not that simple, they can't. Better to have potential CL football with a smaller crowd for a seasonor two, and long-term have the revenue stream of the new stand to follow, which would hopefully give more FFP wiggle room, to try and improve to the to keep us in the CL. "Fortress Villa Park" now should have no bearing on whether we build a new stand or not. It's so short sighted it's almost funny Edited January 5 by Hank Scorpio 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OutByEaster? Posted January 5 Moderator Share Posted January 5 16 minutes ago, sharkyvilla said: The one thing I would say is if doing as I suggest would turn out just as expensive, at least we probably would have the stand open throughout, which Heck put so much emphasis on. It could well be impossible anyway and as you say, the layout of the stands would make it look awkward. I doubt very much that we'd be able to keep the stand open while removing the goalpost structure - it doesn't just hold the roof off the seats, it helps to hold up the whole building. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spiezels Posted January 5 Share Posted January 5 4 hours ago, blandy said: They're looking to expand capacity. A lot of clubs are, at the higher end of the table. How the, er, heck, Heck is going to embiggen VPs capacity I'm not at all sure, potentially by swapping round the second phase (from 50000 to 52000) with the first phase (New North stand) perhaps? Being in London is a HUGE factor. We simply wont ever get the tourist money they get. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CVByrne Posted January 6 Share Posted January 6 11 hours ago, OutByEaster? said: For context, we have three quarters of a modern stadium already built for us, gifted to us on a lease so ridiculously favourable that the EFL wanted to punish us for it. That's not really true though. Our club paid for all the work to the stadium and it's owned by our owners. We did the stadium sale as an FFP workaround. The Tax Payer built West Hams stadium and gifted it to them. Allowing them an incredible advantage because they could dispose of their old ground and really just come out of this with a huge advantage in terms of cashflow 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CVByrne Posted January 6 Share Posted January 6 12 hours ago, blandy said: They're looking to expand capacity. A lot of clubs are, at the higher end of the table. How the, er, heck, Heck is going to embiggen VPs capacity I'm not at all sure, potentially by swapping round the second phase (from 50000 to 52000) with the first phase (New North stand) perhaps? I don't know exactly but he said we can get another 2,700 seats in. Where that work will happen I don't know. I think we need new plans for North Stand to begin after the Euros. Do everything else we can do before then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OutByEaster? Posted January 6 Moderator Share Posted January 6 3 hours ago, CVByrne said: I don't know exactly but he said we can get another 2,700 seats in. Where that work will happen I don't know. He said we'll commission a survey to see what might be possible in terms of getting additional seats in. The 3,000 I think is an aspirational figure and I don't realistically think it's something that's possible. I'm putting all of that down as a spoonful of sugar for the medicine. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidcow Posted January 6 VT Supporter Share Posted January 6 1 hour ago, OutByEaster? said: I'm putting all of that down as a spoonful of sugar for the medicine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HolteExile Posted January 6 Share Posted January 6 15 hours ago, sharkyvilla said: It makes me wonder how even back in the 1970s a stand couldn't be designed and built with the possibility of expanding it reasonably easily in mind. At the time it was commissioned, a ground with close to 50,000 capacity would have been seen as more than adequate. We nudged 40,000 fairly regularly in the early 80s. From about 1984 to the early>mid 90s 25000 or less was not unusual. We were doing well to get 20k in the latter part of the 80s at times. I don't recall any serious discussions to rebuild that end until Ellis took a wrecking ball to the old Trinity. Hard to believe, but the North Stand seemed gargantuan in its day - not the raw capacity as such, more the overall size of it compared to the rest of the ground and most of the other behind-goal efforts across the country. The Witton was always the obvious focus when expansion was being mentioned. There was also a fair bit of scarring from the original North Stand build going way over budget and fraud allegations against the contractors if memory serves. Events that played a major role in Eli$$ returning to the club and the breakup of the 82 squad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheltenham_villa Posted January 6 Share Posted January 6 I don't believe any clubs have seen significant ground investment without it impacting player purchases. Arsenal didn't spend for years, spurs had windows without a single player signing. Both of those clubs had squads that could ride this out a bit and I'm not convinced we are in that position. Add to that the rule movement that Everton have experienced around stadium interest contributing towards FFP and this project alongside team improvements may no longer be viable. For me it seems sensible right now for us to pause and focus on the team. The revenue from champions league will outweigh that from stadium enhancements. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chindie Posted January 6 VT Supporter Share Posted January 6 You have to admire the brass neck required to claim we can tinker the seat layout and get 3k more in. May as well claim we can sign Mbappe if we wish hard enough. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain_Townsend Posted January 6 Share Posted January 6 1 minute ago, Chindie said: You have to admire the brass neck required to claim we can tinker the seat layout and get 3k more in. May as well claim we can sign Mbappe if we wish hard enough. I think one thing we can united around is the fact that Purslow was a good communicator whereas Heck treats us like we are stupid. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thabucks Posted January 6 Share Posted January 6 (edited) Club have said from the offset the plan was to increase to 53,000 so obviously the extra 3,000 seats has been thoroughly investigated and can be done without expensive major structural works … 45,000 is adequate given they had to shut off the upper trinity when we were relegated - our fan base is a tad fickle when things aren’t going well Edited January 6 by thabucks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rugeley Villa Posted January 6 Share Posted January 6 (edited) 22 minutes ago, thabucks said: Club have said from the offset the plan was to increase to 53,000 so obviously the extra 3,000 seats has been thoroughly investigated and can be done without expensive major structural works … 45,000 is adequate given they had to shut off the upper trinity when we were relegated - our fan base is a tad fickle when things aren’t going well Like most fanbases I’d say. Leeds , Sunderland just to name a couple had to do the same thing. Thing is things have changed at the club we are seeing demand like never before and even if we did have a dip which is probable for a club like Villa I think we would see less of a decrease in crowds providing prices were fair. Fans won’t keep paying what we are paying if we have a big slump but i do believe season tickets at Villa will remain sold out regardless of form. Edited January 6 by Rugeley Villa 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
limpid Posted January 6 Administrator Share Posted January 6 11 minutes ago, thabucks said: Club have said from the offset the plan was to increase to 53,000 so obviously the extra 3,000 seats has been thoroughly investigated and can be done without expensive major structural works … 45,000 is adequate given they had to shut off the upper trinity when we were relegated - our fan base is a tad fickle when things aren’t going well I presume that the extra 3k is dependent on the structural works being done for the North Stand. The Holte / Trinity corner can't be filled in without affecting both the road and the park - both will present substantial planning complications - and the existing boxes. The Holte / Witton corner can't be filled as it has the same planning problems, but also contains the vehicle access into the ground, the police control centre and they would have to address the weird shape of that end of the Witton - which means they could only add seats with views over that. The concourses are already so busy / poor that they can't deal with the number of people attending now. I wonder if this is a posture to see if it can drive additional money from elsewhere. I could imagine the tories promising money for the Euros that they won't have to fund. I'm surprised there hasn't been talk of ten year (or longer) season tickets in the new stand. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rugeley Villa Posted January 6 Share Posted January 6 2 hours ago, cheltenham_villa said: I don't believe any clubs have seen significant ground investment without it impacting player purchases. Arsenal didn't spend for years, spurs had windows without a single player signing. Both of those clubs had squads that could ride this out a bit and I'm not convinced we are in that position. Add to that the rule movement that Everton have experienced around stadium interest contributing towards FFP and this project alongside team improvements may no longer be viable. For me it seems sensible right now for us to pause and focus on the team. The revenue from champions league will outweigh that from stadium enhancements. This is a very good point. Are the club looking at things thinking if we could plough money into the squad we have a great chance of challenging the elite clubs in terms of top 4 and honours. I know that was the aim anyway but I think it’s happening(so far) quicker than people thought. It could be at the moment we are prioritising the team over the ground which makes sense in a way . If we were to get established as a genuine top 4, top 6 club then once the foundations of the team were more solid we could then do the ground. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain_Townsend Posted January 6 Share Posted January 6 (edited) Failing to invest in the stadium will pinch us at some point. We have already outgrown the current capacity, delaying just makes the everntual pinch worse. Edited January 6 by Captain_Townsend Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheltenham_villa Posted January 6 Share Posted January 6 1 hour ago, Rugeley Villa said: This is a very good point. Are the club looking at things thinking if we could plough money into the squad we have a great chance of challenging the elite clubs in terms of top 4 and honours. I know that was the aim anyway but I think it’s happening(so far) quicker than people thought. It could be at the moment we are prioritising the team over the ground which makes sense in a way . If we were to get established as a genuine top 4, top 6 club then once the foundations of the team were more solid we could then do the ground. This is my assumption. It's very difficult to do both and the start to the season has presented an opportunity that many wanted but maybe didn't truly believe was possible. Imagine making champions league but not being able to really improve the squad in the summer because we've put all our eggs in the north stand basket Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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