Pack The Park

Quoted from IlkleyMariner

Anyone who has been to the Peninsula stadium in Salford will know that the whole ground is built of modular, almost temporary seats and standing. And they rarely fill it.

I’m sure a structural engineer with half a brain could work out some cost effective options to expand capacity . That would put to bed some of the incomplete guesses we keep seeing on this board.

The main Stand is an issue (has been a big issue since 1985) not because it is a rubbish stand for viewing the game (which it is) , but its made of wood. I know some 12 years ago the insurance for that stand was horrendous, I can't believe it is insurable today, and at what cost.  What's more, if it gets a Listing, and becomes insurable for use, then it will just stand there and not used, losing 2000 capacity.
It's a ticking time bomb.

Quoted from Mappers

It's becoming clearer by the week how much £££££ is going to be needed just to maintain BP let alone improve it ; is it actually financially viable to stay there?  - if this 750k is true (which I do believe is the case) + 350k for the main stand , other bits and pieces you are probably looking at 1.5mill down the drain already since the current custodians began their tenure .

You can imagine the handover

JF 'she's in great shape just needs a few touch ups and modernising of the ladies changing room '

Then a couple of years later the lads have done 1.5million down a rabbit hole only to be asked 'where's the cup money gone ?'

Is BP nearing being impossible to keep open ?

It's that Homeownership feeling.
I'm looking outside at some fence panels and thinking "another coat of Ronseal, or 3 New Panles"? Hmmmmmmmm

The problem is we haven't applied even the most watered down knock-off version of Ronseal for the last 20 years.

At best we had a thin coat of tea-stained water thrown at the fence in the hope it'll do for now.  

This is an absolute rock and a hard place situation.  We simply can't BP get to the point that certain areas are unusable.  It's not a Mansfield position were we would still have a relatively decent capacity without one of our stands, we simply don't have a 5,000 seat stand on one side.  A loss of any of the four stands is a near immediate 25% reduction in our capacity.   That prospect is flipping scary.  It gets even worse when you consider it's not just one of our stands that is in a state of significant decay.

On the other side of the coin, there has to at some point be a sensible discussion as to when you just stop throwing money down the drain.  All the remedial work in the world is surely only going to delay the inevitable, the ground is copulated and it needs rebuilding from the ground up.  Alas, that's ridiculously expensive to do so.

Don't envy 1878 the task at hand on this one.

Keeping Blundell Park ship shape is expensive, but all stadia needs substantial maintenance costs and we have no real alternative.

Obviously these costs are front loaded due to mismanagement in the past,  but if we get on top of it then it should be manageable in the future.

I'm not convinced we needed a new training complex at this stage of our development and would have preferred any money be spent on BP assuming we will be there for a long time to come.

GrimPol:

Re your garden fence fixing options:

We had a very old garden fence that was failing.  A handyman installed a concrete post next to where 2 panels joined.  The post was securely joined to the fence post.  For a small one-off cost the fence will stay in place for many years.

Pity football stands are not fixed so easily and so cheaply.  

I can't reveal my sources but it's bona fide info. Might be able to delay it this close season but it's not going to go away.
If you're in there tomorrow look at the framework and you'll see.

Quoted from ska face

If it’s true that the findus needs £750k of work, John Fenty needs dragging back here and shaking upside down until the money falls out to cover it. That’d be £750k on top of, what, £350k for the main stand, a new roof on the pontoon and another 6 figures on structural works in the Osmond? Plus hundreds of thousands in improvements at Cheapside. These problems don’t just crop up in a year or two.

Makes you wonder how we ever managed to be so bad on the field when we seemingly never spent a penny anywhere else (other than pension contributions to a certain board member).

Stockwood & Petit are clearly better people than me as I’d never stop hammering the bloke in public. Utter rat.

Your points are correct and my hatred for him grows every day.

However, this should, or was, picked up in the due diligence. Surely there was a thorough survey on the main fixed asset.

These costs shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

Quoted from Knut Anders Fosters Voles

Your points are correct and my hatred for him grows every day.

However, this should, or was, picked up in the due diligence. Surely there was a thorough survey on the main fixed asset.

These costs shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

There was a 4 month gap between the purchase being agreed and completion so either they knew what they were taken on or the structural surveyor is currently living in Brazil with his 26 year old Brazilian girlfriend dreaming of M&S mince pies and wondering where it all went wrong

Quoted from ska face

If it’s true that the findus needs £750k of work, John Fenty needs dragging back here and shaking upside down until the money falls out to cover it. That’d be £750k on top of, what, £350k for the main stand, a new roof on the pontoon and another 6 figures on structural works in the Osmond? Plus hundreds of thousands in improvements at Cheapside. These problems don’t just crop up in a year or two.

Makes you wonder how we ever managed to be so bad on the field when we seemingly never spent a penny anywhere else (other than pension contributions to a certain board member).

Stockwood & Petit are clearly better people than me as I’d never stop hammering the bloke in public. Utter rat.

It's quite common now, apparently, for sellers of football clubs to insert clauses that forbid public comments disparaging them by the new owners. The fact that S&P have been so quiet on the previous owners would lead me to suspect that was the case with town too, esp as Fenty was notoriously thin skinned about criticism on here, nevermind by new owners and what they would have knowledge about...

Quoted from toontown

It's quite common now, apparently, for sellers of football clubs to insert clauses that forbid public comments disparaging them by the new owners. The fact that S&P have been so quiet on the previous owners would lead me to suspect that was the case with town too, esp as Fenty was notoriously thin skinned about criticism on here, nevermind by new owners and what they would have knowledge about...

Just on this subject I heard Debbie Cooks interview on Humberside before the game. They asked her what she was most proud of and she said something like "how we managed to turn the club around when I know the condition we found it in".

Think that's about as far as they've gone in an official capacity to state that the previous owner had let it go to save a few quid. Non round balls and all that.

Also said something like now "all the employees at the club would realise that a club is nothing without it's fans, which wasn't always the case". Probably pointing out in a subtle fashion about certain previous employees lying about the fans and directors who shouted at fans to shut up etc.