council want to talk to Town about new stadium

Quoted from MarinerDevil

BP is a shadow of its former self and desperately needs some investment if we're staying for another 5 years (which we definitely are).  Its big open corners create a very windy, soulless atmosphere.  Filling them in with something would go some way to improving the experience and be a worthwhile short-term investment.

That being said, a new stadium will be needed at some point.  Can't see a full redevelopment of BP being feasible and its location isn't great.  If we want a modern club which can attract new fans in 10/20 years' time, new facilities are a must.  I understand that recent plans have been a waste of resources and there should be other priorities right now, but I don't think we can pretend that BP will ever be suitable for the club we hope to be.

This is my view as well. I don't believe a new stadium has been put on the "back burner" by 1878. Not an immediate priority doesn't mean they won't be looking at options behind the scenes. AP said it has to make financial sense for the club. There is more money now for regeneration projects than there has been for long time - that opportunity cannot be ignored and Gy and Clee needs a community stadium as a centrepiece for football, other sport and culture. A structured leasing deal, with a very affordable base rent and some kind of turnover top-up should be very doable for GTFC as part of this. In the meantime, yes we need to make more of BP - including doing something with the corners at the Pontoon end

Standing in the Pontoon, Osmond and corners. £5 kids, tenner for adults.

BP is completely inappropriate for modern day.

The pontoon and lower Findus are fine.

The open corners are embarrassing.

The main and osmond are a huge fire risk and need ripping down.

The upper Findus is a terrible risk. The exits are simply not suitable for the capacity, it takes ages to get out. If there was an urgent need for the masses to escape for whatever reason, there would be casualties.

BP can’t be rescued.

Forget redeveloping BP thats totally pie in the sky. We need a new stadium full stop. The ground has to last st least the next 60 years and offer much  more than we've currently got.

One thing that I think may instantly make the ground look better would be to replace all of the decades old red seating and replace it with black and white double alternating columns like the Pontoon with the letters of GTFC in NEW red SEATS across all the stands.
Black letters in red seats in the Lower Youngs doesn't do it for me personally. White letters slightly better and more readable

I don't get this "soulless identikit stadium" bit. It's not the stadium that creates atmosphere at a game, it' the fans.

As for out of town, Grimsby town centre is against the Humber, and is not surrounded by land on all sides, so you don't have to move very far from town before you are out of it. The majority of fans nowadays travel by car to matches anyway, so being a mile further out won't make that much of a difference Better transport links are what's needed to get fans back into town.. There is no perfect site in Grimsby that ticks all the boxes, where ever it gets built, it will have to be a compromise. The docks is everyone's favourite, but it is valuable industrial land owned by ABP, who might not want to sell, or have a stadium on their land, and would be expensive to buy or rent.

I don't envy the new board for the choices they have to make, they will have to plans for the next fifty or more years, and take into account where the town itself is going. Where ever they choose, they will be controversial, and there will be complaints of one sort or another from fans.

Staggered to read that so many are happy to stay at Blundell Park. Shortsighted? Misguided? A little bit selfish?

What about the lost thousands that see BP for what it is.. an absolute shitehole? Without them returning the club will never progress. Just a venue for an ageing old boys club getting misty eyed about long gone memories of a stadium that has seen much better days and much better football.

And all this talk about having to self-finance £30m plus and getting the club into debt? A good proportion can be raised through Football Foundation grants and the like.. and also if the stadium is community based, from local and national government grants too. JS has already stated that he's looking for investors to come on board to move the club infrastructure forward and it seems we have a council willing to be involved in a community stadium. It's not going to happen overnight, but I think we're closer than we've ever been to finding a new GTFC home that isn't going to put the club under too much pressure financially.

The mindset of the ageing hardcore needs to change. It doesn't really matter what they want or need, it's what's needed to attract the absent thousands and future generations of potential fans who will be born in and around NE Lincs or have exiles as parents. Tarting up Blundell Park isn't going to cut it, a new centrally located stadium is a must in the next five to ten years..

Quoted from Bigdog

Staggered to read that so many are happy to stay at Blundell Park. Shortsighted? Misguided? A little bit selfish?

What about the lost thousands that see BP for what it is.. an absolute shitehole? Without them returning the club will never progress. Just a venue for an ageing old boys club getting misty eyed about long gone memories of a stadium that has seen much better days and much better football.

And all this talk about having to self-finance £30m plus and getting the club into debt? A good proportion can be raised through Football Foundation grants and the like.. and also if the stadium is community based, from local and national government. JS has already stated that he's looking for investors to come on board to move the club infrastructure forward and it seems we have a council willing to be involved in a community stadium. It's not going to happen overnight, but I think we're closer than we've ever been to finding a new GTFC home that isn't going to put the club under too much pressure financially.

The mindset of the ageing hardcore needs to change. It doesn't really matter what they want or need, it's what's needed to attract the absent thousands and future generations of potential fans who will be born in and around NE Lincs or have exiles as parents. Tarting up Blundell Park isn't going to cut it, a new centrally located stadium is a must in the next five to ten years..

I don’t think folk would disagree but instead of chasing a pipe dream with literally no idea how to fund it or just spunking club cash up the wall, the new owners will be much more calculated and cautious. They haven’t put a time frame on anything and I suspect they’d be interested in a centrally located stadium rather than some uninspiring out of town type place...

.... amd I’d have thought that a stadium in the town is more likely to get state funding as it’ll help regenerate the place. Out of town just contributes to the doughnut effect.

Quoted from Bigdog

Staggered to read that so many are happy to stay at Blundell Park. Shortsighted? Misguided? A little bit selfish?

What about the lost thousands that see BP for what it is.. an absolute shitehole? Without them returning the club will never progress. Just a venue for an ageing old boys club getting misty eyed about long gone memories of a stadium that has seen much better days and much better football.

And all this talk about having to self-finance £30m plus and getting the club into debt? A good proportion can be raised through Football Foundation grants and the like.. and also if the stadium is community based, from local and national government grants too. JS has already stated that he's looking for investors to come on board to move the club infrastructure forward and it seems we have a council willing to be involved in a community stadium. It's not going to happen overnight, but I think we're closer than we've ever been to finding a new GTFC home that isn't going to put the club under too much pressure financially.

The mindset of the ageing hardcore needs to change. It doesn't really matter what they want or need, it's what's needed to attract the absent thousands and future generations of potential fans who will be born in and around NE Lincs or have exiles as parents. Tarting up Blundell Park isn't going to cut it, a new centrally located stadium is a must in the next five to ten years..

I wouldn't dispute that BP is far from ideal in terms of parking, infrastructure etc... And yes, it's shabby, crumbling down in parts and dirty. But - and this is important for a lot of football fans in an era when the game is becoming increasingly sanitised and gentrified - it's authentic and the Main Stand, thought to be the oldest stand in the football league (up until last season), in my humble opinion is something we should treasure while we can.

My other reservation about concentrating too much time and energy on a new stadium is what good is a brand spanking new stadium if we're rotting away in non league for the next 5+ years. That ridiculously empty stadium in Darlington springs to mind. Obviously our new stadium would be about half that size though.

In terms of the words identikit, soulless, sterile etc... Southampton's ground is identical to Leicester's, other than the colour of the seats and the carpet the players walk out onto the pitch on.

I've seen the Saints a few times at St Mary's and it just feels like the stadium IKEA built. It's characterless with no individuality. I suppose it's horses for courses though. Some folk would happily bulldoze the Main Stand if it meant they could get served at the bar five minutes quicker at halftime.

I've not looked into this but I'd be fairly confident most football fans, with the exception of possibly Spurs and Man City,  would rather still be at their old grounds, especially West Ham and Arsenal.

The other problem is new stadia quickly looks dated. Look at the Emirates - not a patch on the Tottenham Hotspur stadium.

I'm certainly not opposed to us going to a new stadium - I recognise that we need to in the long-term but just don't think it's a priority when we're going to be regularly getting sub 4k crowds.

I also think there's scope for safe standing in sections of the Pontoon and Osmond which would be a real novelty for our younger fan base during the non league years.

I did like the architect's plans of the trawler shaped stadium - that would be great.

In terms of location, it has to be the docks or failing that, Freeman St, which is currently twinned with Chernobyl.

Laceby Acres Mariners playing at the Morrison's Stadium doesn't do it for me.

UTM!