Main Stand redevelopment thread

dreamwaverider said:
Are we still looking at an up and over build design where the old stand remains open while they build up and over it. If not, what will main stand season ticket holders do for the years while it gets built (Fulham was four years for their new shiny riverside stand.) ?
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No we are now looking at a lick of paint and a couple of new toilet seats in the ladies.

No one said it was a whole new stand did they?.
 
Eagle Black. said:
He can f**k off, don't want him anywhere near the opening of our new stand.

Roy, Sir Steve and Steve Parish can open it.
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It would be an honour to have future Prime Minister Farage open the new stand.

Maybe we could call it the Reform stand. 😀😀😀:england:
 
Eagle Black. said:
He can f**k off, don't want him anywhere near the opening of our new stand.

Roy, Sir Steve and Steve Parish can open it.
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Agreed. and if Khan tries to show up he can go the same way.

No politician or political party for that matter has shown us any support. But once it's built they will be all be trying for a photo opportunity, I hope that Parish tells them no.
 
Hrolf The Ganger said:
It would be an honour to have future Prime Minister Farage open the new stand.

Maybe we could call it the Reform stand. 😀😀😀:england:
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Main stand as built by different political parties.

The Tory stand - Expensive blustering, somebody made a lot of money but not Palace.
Labour Stand - Muddled still not built bogged down in DEI.
Green Party - Not built as they found a Badger colony. I (Badger 11) did not object but they insisted it was for my own good.
Reform - Built with Russian and Chinese money, comes with very own wiretapping service.
Lib Dems - Not involved too unimportant to ask.
SNP - Tried to split from Selhurst Park wanted their own independence.
 
Badger11 said:
Main stand as built by different political parties.

The Tory stand - Expensive blustering, somebody made a lot of money but not Palace.
Labour Stand - Muddled still not built bogged down in DEI.
Green Party - Not built as they found a Badger colony. I (Badger 11) did not object but they insisted it was for my own good.
Reform - Built with Russian and Chinese money, comes with very own wiretapping service.
Lib Dems - Not involved too unimportant to ask.
SNP - Tried to split from Selhurst Park wanted their own independence.
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I'd be happy for any party to pay for it. We could spend our money on putting another tier on the Arthur and Whitehorse.
 
Badger11 said:
Agreed. and if Khan tries to show up he can go the same way.

No politician or political party for that matter has shown us any support. But once it's built they will be all be trying for a photo opportunity, I hope that Parish tells them no.
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Meanwhile, a team who only spent 6 out of the past 30 years in the top tier can announce a new 62k stadium.

What's going on there?
 
MrRobbo said:
Lots of cheep land, in an area of the country that the government are willing to pick up the tab for the infrastructure works
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Precisely.

Some places are more equal than others it seems.
 
Runningman said:
But will the ‘local community’ have power of veto as to who is allowed to to play there ?
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The design looks a bit like a mosque with those chimneys.
An easy conversion to minarets.
 
Hrolf The Ganger said:
Meanwhile, a team who only spent 6 out of the past 30 years in the top tier can announce a new 62k stadium.

What's going on there?
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The American owners of Birmingham did a pretty interesting interview a year or two ago, in which they gave a frank, insightful, and relatively bullshit-free account of how they came to settle on Birmingham, of all the clubs in the world, to buy.

The long and the short of it was that, as dispassionate investors, they looked at:

a) Population size, on the basis that whilst a big city doesn't guarantee a successful club, a small town can probably not sustain one no matter what you do.

b) The asking price. Why pay hundreds of millions for a well-run top flight club when you can pick up a debt-ridden basket case lower down for very little? If you have access to money and are competent then you'll solve most of the clubs problems quite quickly anyway.

c) Crucially, the availability of large areas of cheap, unwanted, unused land quite near the existing stadium, within the wider catchment area. In other words, land which basically has very low market value, and of which you can reasonably say 'If we don't build our new stadium here, there is a high chance nobody will do anything with it, and it will remain an unproductive millstone around the city's neck'.

If you can make A, B, and C add up, then you have a good chance of selling it for more than you spend, which they are clear is their intention.

I was struck by the third criteria in particular. You so often hear new club owners, whether from the UK or abroad, complaining about how difficult and/or expensive it is to overcome planning hurdles and deal with the Council and/or Government etc. They seem never to consider that the degree of that difficulty is directly related to the local state of play.

Birmingham will likely have a much easier ride than Chelsea, for instance, where one neighbour alone had the wherewithal to take the club and Council through the Courts over their right to light when the most recent stadium rebuild scheme was proposed. Man City have been given the keys to east Manchester and told anything they want to do is wonderful, because they are the only big investors ever likely to spend money on an area which has long needed regeneration and where there is, as I understand it, little realistic alternative.

You wouldn't know it from the sycophantic media image of them, but Liverpool have been ruthless and heartless in destroying the community around their ground by buying up all the houses just to knock them down. That works because the houses are so cheap (relatively) and the Council don't object because the club is one of few big investment vehicles for the city. Good luck trying try that approach at Fulham.

The best example is probably Newcastle. Their owners apparently have all the money in the world, and at first glance all they need to do is finish off the existing stadium by adding upper tiers on two sides, thereby completing a huge bowl. They have bought the land behind the Gallowgate stand and can probably extend it now, but behind the stand that you see behind the far touchline when watching on TV is found a very fine terrace of listed buildings which, due to their heritage value, you cannot simply buy up and knock down. Or at least you've got almost no chance unless the city is so desperate for investment that overall it makes sense, which doesn't seem to be the case in Newcastle. End result is that even with all that money, a huge desire to spend it quickly and raise revenues to increase FFP etc, and an existing stadium that most would die for, they are looking at the time and expense of building a new one.

None of which is to say that we cannot compare our stadium project with others, but the fundamental factors are likely to be different in each case, and they are certainly often different to the ones Palace have to address. Doesn't mean Selhurst can't be redeveloped - I think it can - but the journey there varies from place to place.
 
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TheBigToePunt said:
The American owners of Birmingham did a pretty interesting interview a year or two ago, in which they gave a frank, insightful, and relatively bullshit-free account of how they came to settle on Birmingham, of all the clubs in the world, to buy.

The long and the short of it was that, as dispassionate investors, they looked at:

a) Population size, on the basis that whilst a big city doesn't guarantee a successful club, a small town can probably not sustain one no matter what you do.

b) The asking price. Why pay hundreds of millions for a well-run top flight club when you can pick up a debt-ridden basket case lower down for very little? If you have access to money and are competent then you'll solve most of the clubs problems quite quickly anyway.

c) Crucially, the availability of large areas of cheap, unwanted, unused land quite near the existing stadium, within the wider catchment area. In other words, land which basically has very low market value, and of which you can reasonably say 'If we don't build our new stadium here, there is a high chance nobody will do anything with it, and it will remain an unproductive millstone around the city's neck'.

If you can make A, B, and C add up, then you have a good chance of selling it for more than you spend, which they are clear is their intention.

I was struck by the third criteria in particular. You so often hear new club owners, whether from the UK or abroad, complaining about how difficult and/or expensive it is to overcome planning hurdles and deal with the Council and/or Government etc. They seem never to consider that the degree of that difficulty is directly related to the local state of play.

Birmingham will likely have a much easier ride than Chelsea, for instance, where one neighbour alone had the wherewithal to take the club and Council through the Courts over their right to light when the most recent stadium rebuild scheme was proposed. Man City have been given the keys to east Manchester and told anything they want to do is wonderful, because they are the only big investors ever likely to spend money on an area which has long needed regeneration and where there is, as I understand it, little realistic alternative.

You wouldn't know it from the sycophantic media image of them, but Liverpool have been ruthless and heartless in destroying the community around their ground by buying up all the houses just to knock them down. That works because the houses are so cheap (relatively) and the Council don't object because the club is one of few big investment vehicles for the city. Good luck trying try that approach at Fulham.

The best example is probably Newcastle. Their owners apparently have all the money in the world, and at first glance all they need to do is finish off the existing stadium by adding upper tiers on two sides, thereby completing a huge bowl. They have bought the land behind the Gallowgate stand and can probably extend it now, but behind the stand that you see behind the far touchline when watching on TV is found a very fine terrace of listed buildings which, due to their heritage value, you cannot simply buy up and knock down. Or at least you've got almost no chance unless the city is so desperate for investment that overall it makes sense, which doesn't seem to be the case in Newcastle. End result is that even with all that money, a huge desire to spend it quickly and raise revenues to increase FFP etc, and an existing stadium that most would die for, they are looking at the time and expense of building a new one.

None of which is to say that we cannot compare our stadium project with others, but the fundamental factors are likely to be different in each case, and they are certainly often different to the ones Palace have to address. Doesn't mean Selhurst can't be redeveloped - I think it can - but the journey there varies from place to place.
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That all makes a lot of sense.

It is surprising that there is not a piece of available redundant land in the whole of our catchment area that could be used. Sure, land is expensive in the South East but not so much to be prohibitive surely.
I guess football isn't a priority for our local councils. They must have land somewhere they could let go of cheaply to avoid maintenance costs and then help the development process along.

As it is, I expect our current stadium to develop in line with the club's success. If we fill the 35k and keep on an upward trajectory, then there will be pressure to add another 5k to the capacity.
 
Hrolf The Ganger said:
That all makes a lot of sense.

It is surprising that there is not a piece of available redundant land in the whole of our catchment area that could be used. Sure, land is expensive in the South East but not so much to be prohibitive surely.
I guess football isn't a priority for our local councils. They must have land somewhere they could let go of cheaply to avoid maintenance costs and then help the development process along.

As it is, I expect our current stadium to develop in line with the club's success. If we fill the 35k and keep on an upward trajectory, then there will be pressure to add another 5k to the capacity.
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Councils aren't always big landowners these days. Even if a south London Council happened to own a big enough and appropriate site for a new stadium, they would be negligent bordering on criminal to give it to us cheap rather than get highest value for it from a housebuilder or other developer. Again, the opposite may be true in some other parts of the country.

The best Croydon council could do is approve our main stand application quickly, and with the minimum reasonable requirements placed upon us as possible. That, by and large, is what they did it seems to me.

Whilst typing, something has come meandering up from the depths of my memory....

Many years ago, Croydon council designated the pitch at Selhurst as an open sports facility or suchlike (the exact words are lost to me now). This was when the club didn't own the ground, and there seemed little chance of a reconciliation between Jordan and Noades (or whoever it was), and I think the Council came to the view that whilst it couldn't sort out the toxic legal dispute, it could at least make the designation as a kind of failsafe so that, in the event the club got kicked out of the ground, the Council at least had some basis on which to refuse redevelopment proposals of the land. That may have been a pre-emptive message to discourage any scheme of that type.

Overall, I don't think the Council gets a fair trial from many Palace fans. There are, as per my original post, examples of other Council's doing much more to help clubs, but Croydon seem to have done right by Palace over the years as far as I can tell.

As I have set out before and won't bore anyone with again, I think the incremental increases you describe are feasible, albeit each project (stand by stand, presumably) is a big, expensive, and difficult undertaking given our local circumstances.
 
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TheBigToePunt said:
Councils aren't always big landowners these days. Even if a south London Council happened to own a big enough and appropriate site for a new stadium, they would be negligent bordering on criminal to give it to us cheap rather than get highest value for it from a housebuilder or other developer. Again, the opposite may be true in some other parts of the country.

The best Croydon council could do is approve our main stand application quickly, and with the minimum reasonable requirements placed upon us as possible. That, by and large, is what they did it seems to me.

Whilst typing, something has come meandering up from the depths of my memory....

Many years ago, Croydon council designated the pitch at Selhurst as an open sports facility or suchlike (the exact words are lost to me now). This was when the club didn't own the ground, and there seemed little chance of a reconciliation between Jordan and Noades (or whoever it was), and I think the Council came to the view that whilst it couldn't sort out the toxic legal dispute, it could at least make the designation as a kind of failsafe so that, in the event the club got kicked out of the ground, the Council at least had some basis on which to refuse redevelopment proposals of the land. That may have been a pre-emptive message to discourage any scheme of that type.

Overall, I don't think the Council gets a fair trial from many Palace fans. There are, as per my original post, examples of other Council's doing much more to help clubs, but Croydon seem to have done right by Palace over the years as far as I can tell.
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I suppose that depends on the current value of the land versus the revenue, jobs and exposure that a 50k stadium would bring to the local area, especially if it was part of a bigger complex of shops, hotel, cinema, parking etc.

We can dream...
 
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