When are we likely to get definitive stadium news?

[Trumo]

if it needed to be could the Anfield Road stand go over the road itself and then the road tunnels through it? Is there anywhere else where this is the case?

 

The first question in the link I posted above answers the question of what will happen to the section of Anfield Road immediately behind the stadium. In terms of roads under the stand, Villa Park's main stand has this, as does Atletico Madrid's main stand, as does part of PSG's Parc des Princes.

[derykw]

if it needed to be could the Anfield Road stand go over the road itself and then the road tunnels through it? Is there anywhere else where this is the case?

 

I think the Vicente Calderon has that but I`d be amazed if we did it. You`re talking hundreds of square metres of dead space which would be better served with bars, eateries, souvenir shops and the like. Building over the road just doesn`t make sense economically.

[Dicko]

As far as I can remember the infrastructure upgrade only appliedvto to new the stadium tom and george built.

I think if the club pursued that angle they'd be rightly accused of semantics.

If the area cannot cope with more than 61,000 it still can't cope with it less than 100 yards away.

 

And you have to remember it was only the first HKS design that ever broached going beyond 60,000. The Parrybowl and the second HKS revision both had capacities of 60,000.

 

Indeed the second HKS revision the final design for the new stadium would have left us playing in an essentially three sided stadium such was the ridiculous dimension of the Priory Road End.

[parcoporta]

Landsdowne Road in Dublun has. Railway line go through/under one side

[bri]

yep they could tunnel the anny road and alter walton breck to make the kop bigger. its the least the council could do with the club staying in anfield. 

[old skool tom]

Hope its symmetrical and doesnt slope down like Holte Eand or Villas main stand

I think stadiums look great when they are slightly different stands but look like theres been some joined up thinking.

Hope the annie road ties in with new main stand and theres secret hidden plans for the centeenary so it all looks joined up one day

[xerxes]

yep they could tunnel the anny road and alter walton breck to make the kop bigger. its the least the council could do with the club staying in anfield.

The Council have bent over backwards to help us, and bent quite a few rukes too alreay, first to offer us Stanley Park, then to include a stadium expansion as urban regeneration.

 

Tunneling the ARE may not b the best solution, road closure may be best, the problems of extending the Kop are considerable.

[xerxes]

Thisisanfield went to the public exhibition today and asked key LFC staff members and the architects a few questions about the proposed development. Some of your own questions might be answered by this.

Thanks Trumo.

 

Some of the detail here seems odd.

 

The current capacity of Anfield is 45,500. The new capacity with the redeveloped main stand is 54,000, 8,500 more. The club is saying that the upper tier, capacity 7,900, will be general admission. That provides for only 600 new season ticket and premium seats.

 

We currently offer 4000 premium seats. Man U offer 10,700, Arsenal around 9,400.Our annual revenue per matchday seat is £858, Man U’s £1,425.

 

The new ARE may offer some premium seating, but premium seating in ends is less popular- and less lucrative.

 

The numbers don’t seem to fit.

[xerxes]

The thing I'm wondering about is where this idea comes from about the club having to invest in wider infrastructure if they want a capacity greater than 60k. Now of course, the area needs to be able to cope with a mass influx of people every other week, but the infrastructure that is supposedly required for that would not only be in use to move this mass influx, it would be in use throughout the week by everybody in the area - residents, businesses and match goers alike. Having to invest in local infrastructure is a key reason as to why nobody has jumped in and gone ahead with a larger capacity stadium.

 

Also, the cost per seat increases exponentially the higher the capacity you look at, so you could say that is another factor as to why more detailed analysis has been required to determine whether the outlay is worth the potential revenue gains, and why a higher capacity has been left off the table as regards the initial redevelopment.

 

I get the impression that the council were trying to shake down the club to raise the funds to enable the investment in infrastructure, and while their stance may have softened on that front given that they're dealing with less brash and more considerate club owners, they are still letting it be known that they want to club to cover the financial aspects of infrastructure investment even though the wider area will benefit more than the club.

 

It's not dissimilar to when certain councillors with a Blue leaning kept promoting the idea of a groundshare with the Red half footing the vast majority of the outlay.

Traffic Impact Assessments (TIA’s) are quite advanced these days. I can understand why a figure of 60k ( the old terraced Anfield maximum capacity once) might be a break point. You cannot have any leisure provider drawing in people who physically are going to experience difficulty in getting to and from the site. The absence of a rail link has always blighted the site. Car parking is pretty much at saturation point already. If the club want an extra 25,000 people converging on the ground on matchdays ( 70k capacity), it is reasonable to ask how those people are going to arrive an leave.

 

The cost per seat in refurbished redeveloped grounds is invariably higher than in a purpose built ground.

 

The wider area would only have to cope with an extra 25,000 people on matchdays. There is no benefit in supplying excess capacity on non matchdays, so it is hard to see how the area would benefit more than the club.

[bri]

When you look at the city without an emotional context, see the managed decline of the anfield area and the absolute farcical way the council and LFC have handled themselves over the last 20 or so years it's beyond belief that they've been allowed to get away with what they've created and still be in situ.

 

The council know that LFC are the only contributor to the anfield area and with no infrastructure in place no other major commercial investors will come. The Council along with the Peel Group are only interested in the waterfront, that's just an economic reality of any inner city area in the north west.

 

Therefore now the club has decided to stay the City Council should get out the way of any redevelopment plans for the ground and help put a tram / rail link in from the City Centre so the area can cope with increased footfall. The club could buy the land, re build new houses, move the highway, build new commercial property (pub, Hillsborough shop, chippy. etc) for say the price of Aspas & Illori (£15m + wages). The club are guilty of managed decline, they should be buying and redeveloping property in the anfield area to relocate people rather than sweating them out. 

 

The current 56k capacity only maintains the status quo on ticket prices. If we want to see real change in our lifetime of a 65k plus and a new pricing model then those changes to the anny road and Kop end need to happen. The £10 ticket isn't a pipe dream it exists, it works and those clubs are getting to the finals of the CL. Germany as a league did it in 10 years, fan ownership and a beer in your seat.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/football/david-conn-inside-sport-blog/2012/dec/01/german-fan-owned-clubs-bundesliga

[xerxes]

When you look at the city without an emotional context,

A good post in full.

 

I agree that Anfield (the area) has been starved of investment over the decades, and the Council should bear its responsibility for that. It is also true that the Club, either passively, or actively ( depending on your view) has acted like a slum landlord, buying piecemeal, allowing the property to rot, to drive down the prices of the next purchase.

 

For me the Kings Dock waterfront was the missed opportunity, an opportunity to build a statement state of the art stadium in the heart of the city with great communication link and entertainment potential. Peel Holdings and the Council were right to be enthusiastic about the project. We subsequently squandered £50m on a stadium that was never to be built.

 

I also agree that the Club should be investing in the area. So far, beyond extending the stadium for our own benefit, there has been no announcement that we are investing in as much as a sandwich bar.

 

I see no prospect of the status quo being maintained in a 54k/58k capacity, I think the new prices will be significantly higher and the limited increase in capacity has been effected to enable that.

 

The argument on capacity tends to look backwards, and not forwards. We have improved our average attendance by less than any other club in the North West in the PL era. A combination of the increased popularity of football overall, and population, has done that- an opportunity we have let pass by. We are still the second best supported club in England by home average historic attendance, yet people wring their hands about whether we can fill a 60k or 70k stadium.

[Ronnie Whelan]

In my opinion, we need to ultimately aim for an expanded kop and a centenary stand like the new main stand. I'm delighted we're staying at anfield, but this should be the start of rather than the limit of our ambirions.

We could easily fill an 80k in my opinion and wouldn't be great if the club saved 10-15k of tickets at reduced prices for local people, as well as reduced prices for our very loyal support in Britain and othet countries.

[xerxes]

So, rather than pay for a redevelopment of where we've been for the past 122 years and bring that stadium up to par with what the rest of the contenders have, you'd rather us up and move to the docklands area, paying probably 3/4 times more than we will for this and have one of those soulless megadomes that are now created where you have to sit about 3 miles away from the pitch?

 

60k is about right just now for us. In a few years time, we can look again at the Kop and Centenary stands, buy the houses around there and repeat to make a 75-80k stadium if needed.

 

We're just doing now what the mancs did years ago. They proved you don't need a spanking new stadium when you could expand your current one to be better.

There are quite a few assumptions in this post.

 

A redevelopment, in situ, which delivered a stadium and facilities that meet our aspirations has always been favourite. Whether this is that answer remains to be seen.

 

This half new, half old, redevelopment is estimated to cost around £150m. The Main Stand is estimated to be ready for 2019, the ARE will be behind that, 2020 earliest. The increased revenues from a new stadium would have been worth around £30m a season. A new stadium would have been ready for 2013. So that is £210m in lost revenue alone over seven years. The new stadium was estimated at around £300m. A new stadium can be whatever you want it to be, so it did not have to be a soulless megadome which we both agree would have been the wrong move.

 

It is difficult to justify 60,000 as being “about right” when you factor in our international fan base, our English status as still the second best supported club by home historic average attendance and the growth in attendances generally ( which we have missed out on) since the PL era. The truth is that the club wants to keep capacity artificially low so it can maximise ticket prices.

 

You are right to say that we are thirty years behind the Mancs in redevelopment, but wrong to suggest that our site offers the same potential as Old Trafford did.

[Trumo]

...The Main Stand is estimated to be ready for 2019, the ARE will be behind that, 2020 earliest...

 

Where have you read that?

 

Oh, and with regards to your earlier question directed at me, the regeneration of the wider area with new homes and facilities is designed to bring people, life and jobs back to the area. Because the area had been left to rot for so long, a lot of people moved away. For the regeneration of the area, any infrastructure needs to be able to cope with this influx of people coming back to the area or moving to the area, as the case may be. Granted we aren't talking about mobilising as many as 60,000 people every other week, but the transport infrastructure still needs to be able to cope with the 24/7 needs of the people in the area. It can't be placed on LFC alone to handle the financial burden of doing that, but I agree there is a responsibility to share some of that burden.

[xerxes]

Where have you read that?

Tony Barrett in yesterday's Times.The implication was that the ARE might not follow immediately until revenues from the new Main Stand were coming through.

[Trumo]

Tony Barrett in yesterday's Times.The implication was that the ARE might not follow immediately until revenues from the new Main Stand were coming through.

 

It's sort of obvious that any work on the Anny Road will only start once the Main Stand work is complete and all the facilities are up and running, bringing in revenue. It's the only real way of ensuring that capacity doesn't fall below the current level while any work is being carried out on the second phase. I didn't buy yesterday's Times and I can't view the article online as it's behind a paywall, but I want to know how Tony is concluding that 2019 is the earliest the Main Stand will be ready.

 

Tony, if you're lurking, maybe you can log on and tell us.

[PestiRed]

From a purely financial viewpoint, it seems very sensible that the investors would build the Main Stand first and then judge whether the ARE investment is worthwhile. There's a fair chance that match day revenues will drop to less than 20% of overall revenue for most clubs by that point and the investment may not give returns that are overall as attractive as we presume they will be. An extra £15m per year might not be deemed great in a few years time.

 

From a fan's point of view, I would like the biggest stadium we can fill and a Kop similar to the Sudtribune with a noise that scares the living shit out of every opponent we have. Unfortunately, this might not be the investor view

[Russ Atmosphere]

Standing Kop then?

[Barrington Womble]

It's sort of obvious that any work on the Anny Road will only start once the Main Stand work is complete and all the facilities are up and running, bringing in revenue. It's the only real way of ensuring that capacity doesn't fall below the current level while any work is being carried out on the second phase. I didn't buy yesterday's Times and I can't view the article online as it's behind a paywall, but I want to know how Tony is concluding that 2019 is the earliest the Main Stand will be ready.

 

Tony, if you're lurking, maybe you can log on and tell us.

I thought the club committed this week to it being ready for 2016/17 season.

[xerxes]

It's sort of obvious that any work on the Anny Road will only start once the Main Stand work is complete and all the facilities are up and running, bringing in revenue. It's the only real way of ensuring that capacity doesn't fall below the current level while any work is being carried out on the second phase. I didn't buy yesterday's Times and I can't view the article online as it's behind a paywall, but I want to know how Tony is concluding that 2019 is the earliest the Main Stand will be ready.

 

Tony, if you're lurking, maybe you can log on and tell us.

I agree that if maintaining capacity is a priority it is the only way to go.

 

With e new Main Stand built, losing the ARE would only take us back to where we are now, around 45,000.

 

What was unclear was whether there would be a break between the two to allow the extra revenues from the Main Stand to build up to help finance the ARE, that is about cash flow.

 

He said that the target was for the new Main Stand to be open for the 2019/20 season.

 

I am unclear as to how the Main Stand is reeveloped without losing capacity though.

[xerxes]

I thought the club committed this week to it being ready for 2016/17 season.

If the application is submitted over the next few months, it should be approved for the start of 2015.

 

Could it be completed in 18 months ready for 2016/17? Also the houses need to be demolished and the infra structure and landscaping done.It's a big job.Maybe. It would be tight, and would assume no unforseen delays.

[Barrington Womble]

If the application is submitted over the next few months, it should be approved for the start of 2015.

 

Could it be completed in 18 months ready for 2016/17? Also the houses need to be demolished and the infra structure and landscaping done.It's a big job.Maybe. It would be tight, and would assume no unforseen delays.

The demolition and prep work can begin without planning permission. I'm not the one who committed to the date, its ayre - but considering how conservative they've been all along and how they have always refused to put a date on anything, I think they're confident it can be done.

[PestiRed]

Standing Kop then?

Not for me. The Sudtribune is impressive on non-standing nights and we can do that. For me there are three elements in safe standing which are

1) the system of how fans are organised to stand

2) the attitude of the football authorities towards fans

3) the attitude of the government authorities and police towards fans

 

Whilst Germany has proved that the first element can now be safe; the FA, the British Govt, the police and the majority of PL clubs are a long way from proving that they are responsible enough and have the right attitude towards football fans to make standing safe for us

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Why is it going to take 6 years to build a stand? Or even five.

[nando1000]

What will happen to the old shop in the KOP when we get the new one?