Stadium Expansion

Remember the London stadium isn't a football stadium, it's a stadium built for the Olympics with a lot of space in the middle where a football teams plays, if we were eventually to move (and I don't believe it is currently on the cards) we would build a proper football stadium!

 

St Albans Abbey is a great idea. From the Vicarage to the Abbey is certainly promotion.

 

We should redevelop Verulamium, it needs a lick of paint IMO.

 

From the conversations on here last week I decided to sketch out a way of expanding the VR stand without spanning across the road. The trouble is we don't have a match until tomorrow, so I've had way too much free time and things got out of hand...

Here is my model of how the VR stand could be expanded. The dimensions were estimated from Google Earth and planning drawings online, so won't be exactly right. I estimate if we purchase the lay-by we can move the stand backwards by 2.5m, and increase capacity by approx 1,500.





I've gone a bit overboard and detailed the concourse, rather than clogging the thread those interested can have a look here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/145456649@N02/albums/72157673163681480/with/29290148483/

The building opposite might get awkward with the light though.

 

Great effort. 10/10. The only other comment I would pass is that I would have the away fans in the lower part of the VR only.

 

Excellent work, and I mean it ... far better than most sketches/plans I get to work with.

An extra 1.5k really wouldn't justify the expense IMO although with a little bracing I suspect another 5 or so rows could be added to the front of the top tier without buggering up sight lines ... However I'm still not certain the concourse(s) would be big enough (but digging down might help including lowering the pavement outside a little for easy egress).

 

I really really hope we never move to a soulless out of town stadium, I guess it's something that could happen if we manage to hang around in the Premiership for say, the next 5 years. Under those circumstances though, what's the maximum size crowd we are ever likely to get, 30k? I struggle to see us getting big enough that we'd ever attract anywhere near that on a regular basis. So if we could manage somehow to get VR up to something like 25k hopefully it will never be worth moving.

 

Brilliant!


Just goes to show though how little space we have.. all that for an (estimated) 1,500 extra seats. With the club talking about trying to add 8,500 something radical needs to happen.


PS I take it your '2,5m' land purchase includes a pavement on the stadium side of the road?

 

I'd expect such views from an outsider but I don't think that just hanging around for five years is in Gino's plans, in that time we should be competing in Europe or at least for the Euro spots. Our location actually makes us easily accessible to millions so why stop at 30k? and there's a huge difference between out of town and out of the town centre, we need not look that far for a viable space. And lastly judging by the new Friuli it wouldn't be another crisp bowl either, as is the trend rather than just packing them in we'll be offering the whole entertainment package to go with.

I really miss those old days on the terraces too but I don't want them back.

 

This is great work

 

I'm just being realistic. Southampton have a relatively new stadium with just over 30k capacity. They've been much more successful for longer than us and have much less direct competition. They didn't feel the need to build a stadium of much more than £30k capacity. Middlesbrough Leicester and Stoke all average around £30k and again have all generally been successful for longer (apart from a brief few years for borough when they were on a par with us) and none of them have 4-5 London clubs to compete with.

 

Greater London has a population ten times that of Southampton and Watford doesn't have the English Channel to compete with. Furthermore those other London clubs all rely on success to keep numbers up and success isn't always easy - just ask Chelsea or West Ham. With the exception of one those other clubs you mention have all been average at best and the exception, Leicester certainly are reaping the benefits of last season's success.

 

Our catchment area can easily provide 40k +. We have potentially the best location in the country.

 

My thinking here was that if we intend to get to 30,000+ seats then we'd need to provide 3,000 away seats, but as you say it could be limited to the lower tier. My internal arrangement would need changing, perhaps with a couple of partition walls to segregate the stairwells on the lower concourse but nothing major.

 

Scummy that is great work. I just wonder how much light would be lost from the houses behind it?

 

I was thinking the same r.e. the cost for a fairly modest capacity increase. The added concourse space would be a massive bonus though, I think. Although it doesn't look massive from the model, the concourse area would increase from 290m^2 to 835m^2 (minus the inaccessible area under the stairs on the ground floor). Plus toilet and food facilities will double.

Regarding cantilevering the upper tier further, I completely agree. You'd need to form a propped cantilever by using a continuous steel beam running from the external wall, cross the ceiling of the concourse rather than bracing though - the bracing would obstruct headroom at the back of the lower tier, or require lifting the upper tier significantly. That said, there's a massive void between the concourse ceiling and the underside of the upper tier, which allows for plenty of steel framing if need be.

 

To be more accurate the population of Greater London is approximately 34 times that of Southampton.......

 

Thanks Stevo. The 2.5m allows for a ~2m wide pavement alongside the road at the narrowest point. As it's all done from a blurry Google Earth image though that may need some tweaking! Thinking about it, my 4.5m may have been the total including pavement, but I definitely did allow for the pavement either way - I've slept since.

 

The one modelled, a lot. They'd probably get a bit of evening sun, but that's all! The row further to the West would be much less affected, with only the morning light being an issue. The street further back, I have absolutely no idea to be honest!

Having just checked sun directions on the map, the house modelled would get sun from 1pm onwards at the worst time of year and houses to the West would get sun from 11am at worst.

 

But how many other clubs cover greater London who are also significantly bigger than Southampton, Chelsea Arsenal and very shortly Spurs all have massive stadiums that they could fill many times over with fans from greater London. It's obviously a bigger area but naturally there is also much much bigger competition.

 

Facing the VR stand itself on VR, excluding shop at town end and turnstile block at hospital end, there is only 1 building (according to Googlemaps occupied by The West Watford Christian fellowship) - the rest is the end of back gardens of Oxford St and a block of lock-up garages.

The houses are 25m from the stand, the back gardens would get less light for sure, but I would imagine it wouldn't be too severe.

Given that it makes no difference to the rear aspect of the stand, is there any reason why the roof slopes down? I hate going to grounds where you are looking out of a slit to see the pitch (Goodison springs to mind!)

(not an engineer so the finer points of cantilevering are beyond me!)

Further edit - the size of the building and its distance from the stand both look a bit small to me (but don't take this as criticism because it's top work!)

 

Buy up all affected properties, knock them down, re route Vic Road through Oxford St, have a large outdoor paved space with a massive statue of our greatest ever player Jose Manuel Jurado

 

But we on the M1, are just a few miles from the M3, M4, M25, A1, M40, on the main rail route from Euston to the midlands and on two tube lines across NW London.

The other Clubs cannot grow that much more - we can.

 

Primarily to bring it closer to the other stands' roof levels, so it doesn't look ridiculously oversized. I'm not an expert at long-span cantilevered roofs, but I don't think it'd make a vast difference stability-wise whether it was sloped or horizontal.

 

Sorry - I was just correcting a numeric inaccuracy, not taking part in the debate!

From my perspective we should always be looking outwards and away from London if we want to grow our support. North of the Thames and outside the M25, all the clubs in Berks, Bucks, Oxfordshire, Beds, Herts, Northants, Cambs and Essex are at least two divisions below us. We are blessed with great and improving transport links and should actively look to grow our support base in places such as Wycombe, MK, Slough, etc. If the PL is such a global brand surely the people of the Northern Home Counties can be encouraged to come and view the "product" live. Filling 10,000 correctly priced seats should be a piece of cake.

 

We shouldn't even need to look that far away - we have 2 million people metaphorically on our doorstep - there must be a lot of unattached people in there who would like the opportunity of local reasonably priced Premier League football if we can stay up for a couple of years.

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West Ham are the big club of East London, with Leyton and Dag the smaller clubs .

Chelsea are the big club of West London with Brentford , QPR and possibly Reading the smaller clubs

Arsenal are the club of inner North London, no smaller clubs.

Spurs are the big club of Outer NE London with Barnet possibly the smaller club .......

There is no major club in NW London . There is only 1 smaller club and that is Watford .

There is a massive tract of London that has no major club to follow. There is no reason why we can't become the Spurs of NW London. It would require success and intelligent club leadership. It seems we have that in Gino and Dux.

The other area that has a huge tract of population with no major club is South London, Kent and Sussex. I sure that's why Charlton were also on the radar of Gino when they were looking for a club to buy.

 

Looking at it in 'real time' it does indeed look you could have a narrow pavement after moving the back of the stand 2,5 meters. The parking spaces becoming the pavement. Actually i was wondering if the far side pavement needed to be there.. but i guess it does because of that one property.


Talking of that properly.. i'm sure light would not be an issue for them. As they are the West Watford Christian fellowship.. so the light will always shine on them. Hallelujah!

 

Building a fan base is a bit more than just who lives within a certain radius. As an example from a different sport, Saracens got about 7,000 at Vicarage road, but could generate 40,000+ crowds at Wembley just 8 miles south. Most of that extra growth was from London based rugby fans, who knew where Wembley was, knew it was very accessible, wanted to go to that stadium. At Allianz Park in Barnet crowds are back down to the 7,000 mark. Wasps were getting 6,000 at High Wycombe and now 20,000+ at the Ricoh Coventry. Marketing, stadium facilities and accessibility seem to me to be be as important as how many people live with 20 miles of the ground. Staying in the Premiership is the key, but a bigger better stadium, with the new tube access and better parking would grow crowds IMHO. The existing location being near the town centre (with its shopping, bars restaurants and soon Cinema and car parking) is important to building crowds, as the tradition for existing supporters. The Met line extension will be a fantastic boost. a train every 15 minutes from the West london suburbs and from the interchange at Watford junction for services from Euston, will really encourage new fans if they can get tickets. A bigger better stadium with a successful team would generate 30,000 crowds.

 

Bit of an untraditional view, but as a Premier League team I think the main reason for increasing the fan base is the sale of merchandise and attractiveness to advertisers.

However big your stadium is, you just need to be filling it on a game by game basis, and there is little point in building the number of attending fans to much more than you have capacity for; generally those fans will be relatively local and part of your catchment area.

The first small club that can break through with an international brand, whether its for their football or something else, appealing to groups across the globe for whatever reason (if I knew it, I'd be minted) could change the world of football. Thinking Harlem Globe Trotters rather than Man U, developing interest in theclub through other activities.

Before you know it there's a WFC theme park up on Leavesden Common next to Harry Potter, and Messi will ay for your touring team until he's fifty (with a shaved head, calling himself Curly).

Sorry. Thinking randomly out loud.

 

Arsenal dropping Woolwich from their name was probably the smartest thing they ever did because IMO being named after a town or area will always hold a team back.

I'd propose a name change but how would you go about renaming a town?

 

I wouldn't rename the town, I'd just rename us to 'Glory Hornet boys FC".

The Asian fanbase would love it.

 

Newcastle, Chelsea, Liverpool, Leeds...

You can find examples to suit either agenda.