Show us the money

Quoted from Gaffer58

Will anyone in the lower leagues sell out their grounds when the new TV package for league clubs starts in a season or 2. Isn’t there a proposal that all games will be televised but will be pay to view. If this is correct apart from your absolute hard core of fans who must be at the game I can see the majority watching from home, especially on a cold wet Tuesday night in December.

Quoted from Poojah

Brentford is certainly the best example of a fine new stadium built on a very sub-optimal piece of land, and in many ways is a modern interpretation of old school grounds like Blundell Park.

I've said previously that you could not build a new ground of meaningful size on the site of BP without purchasing and razing at least some of the surrounding houses, which has significant cost-implications and complexities associated with it, not to mention is morrally questionable (see Liverpool's expansion of Anfield). However, I superimposed Brentford's community over the boundaries of Blundell Park (including parking spaces), at scale, and it's perhaps not as far out as I had thought. Brentford's ground holds 17,250, so could you realistically build something similar in style of between 12,000 and 14,000? Probably, with the requisite architectural skill and a concession or two over the odd quirky design element (the likes of which Brentford's stadium isn't completely without).

[img]https://i.ibb.co/DpWqVJL/bfc-stad.png[/img]
Interesting though this is, the only real hurdle it solves is that it removes the need to find a new site. The bigger challenges of planning permission and much more pertinently finance would still loom just as large. It would perhaps offer the option of doing things in more modular fashion which may ease (or at least spread) the financial burden, but that comes with it's own headaches and risks (how do you accommodate the lost capacity in the interim, what if it never gets finished?).

But it is at least an option. How long is the realistic shelf life of the Main Stand and the Osmond? In their current guise, you'd imagine less than a decade. Even with some significant material improvements to their fundamental structures, is it realistic that they are hosting fans in 2043? I very much doubt it.

There are some monumental financial hurdles to climb amidst an unpredictable economic landscape, but as someone who has tended to pour cold water on the chances of a new ground (in any form), the steady rate at which the club is now moving forward at least gives me a modicum of hope that it could happen at some point in the foreseeable future. Not in the next 5 years, but somewhere in the window of 5 to 15 years, I feel we might just see something come to fruition.

Quoted from BobbyCummingsTackle

All it needs is 20 people to give up their family homes. And planning permission to flatten them.

Quoted from pizzzza

The greater good...

Quoted from Rob_in_Grimsby

you say it HAS to be done but the club decided not to do it in the end and I presume they still got the certificate,

Quoted from Captain Sensible

I'm not an architect, but know that they are innovative people.  If I let my creative side out of its box, I can imagine the steelwork frame for a new stand being erected around the main stand before / during the season (not match days obviously), leaving the old stand intact and usable for the season.  At the end of the season there would be over three months available to demolish the old stand, and fit out the seating in the new stand.

I don't know if this approach would be feasible, but could be worth taking a look at?

Quoted from Madeleymariner

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few

Quoted from Poojah

They’ve done pretty much just that with the two recently expanded stands at Anfield, but there they were able to build the frame of the expansion behind and eventually over the existing structure before completing the remainder of the works in the closed season (Liverpool are due to play their first few games away from home to allow them extra time to complete the work).

They were only able to do that having bought up the houses originally behind the stands, with some controversy about they tactics used in order to do so. Even then, and with Liverpool’s resources, it was a lengthy exercise.

Assuming we didn’t intend to do that, you could only build upon the existing footprint of the Pontoon, Main and Osmond Stands, meaning each stand would have to be demolished first (and I’m not sure whether you could demolish the Main Stand and Osmond at different intervals given they are essentially the same, very old structure).

You could do something as you describe with the Findus stand though, if you build atop the existing car park. That would enable you to build something akin to Brentford’s South Stand, only with a more pronounced / elongated drop in roofline and seating profile.

[img]https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article22628626.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/0_AGP_MDM_030920BRENTFORD_020JPG.jpg[/img]
[img]https://resources.evertonfc.com/photo-resources/2021/11/26/a7ea0234-bdc3-4044-8271-81634d2ca11e/GettyImages-1342448504.jpg?width=800&height=450[/img]
[img]https://i.ibb.co/DpWqVJL/bfc-stad.png[/img]

Quoted from Captain Sensible

That's interesting thank you.  I didn't know about Liverpool.  I thought I was probably spouting nonsense!