General More news re; stadium/training ground, thoughts?

[Sheik djibouti]

Stratfield Brake?

 

[Foley]

When Tiger did the 5 min phone in last week. There was a question ie the Stadium, and Tiger said there are two sites basically there now looking at, one of which is North Oxford WE! He also said one of them was too far away for supporters, and needs to be closer. That was Bicester! One of the 4 original options. I don’t know the other that’s been ruled out. Whatever is in the pipeline, it will need to happen sooner, because the lease at the Kassam is almost up, and ideally you’d like to move straight in to a new home. Rather than play some games elsewhere while a stadium is being developed. Let’s just see what happens and be patient.

I believe that the licence runs out sometime in 2026.
So maybe six and a half years left?
Spurs built their ground in what a couple of years (?).
So yes the timescales are getting tighter but it is still doable I would think.

 

[Manorlounger]

When Tiger did the 5 min phone in last week. There was a question ie the Stadium, and Tiger said there are two sites basically there now looking at, one of which is North Oxford WE! He also said one of them was too far away for supporters, and needs to be closer. That was Bicester! One of the 4 original options. I don’t know the other that’s been ruled out. Whatever is in the pipeline, it will need to happen sooner, because the lease at the Kassam is almost up, and ideally you’d like to move straight in to a new home. Rather than play some games elsewhere while a stadium is being developed. Let’s just see what happens and be patient.

Just to be clear, he didn't specify either. He did state that 2 sites were being looked at. Another had been ruled out as being too far from the city.
I would like to think that if, and that's an if, not a when, the lease/licence is up on Grenoble Road, a temporary extension could be negotiated should any new stadium not be completed in time.

 

[Marked Ox]

On time left at the Kasstad, even if we had to extend, I'd be very surprised if Kassam didn't let us out early considering he will get the site to sell for housing (so the stadium site/East Stand car park and overflow car park). That is quite an incentive when he also then doesn't have the hassle of the stadium/Conference centre as well.

 

[christenedinjericho]

Once again some of our fan base are faffing around again at capacity. As a club we struggled with the Manor in terms of expansion and then had near on two decades of being a bit of a joke ground with just the three stands. If and it's a big if we get (any) the land and then go ahead then perhaps the team behind all this will I'm sure have all the intelligence and data to build for the future properly this time around. The capacity imho will need to be at least equal or a tiny bit more than those biscuit barrels from down the M4.

The cost in building a 16k stadium to a 25k Stadium is not that great in difference as we are talking mainly in concrete and seats but the cost in perhaps adding on capacity in say two, three or four years would be far greater adding in planning and increase in labour and material costs and before anyone asks I have had a background in developing. If our club really wants to move forward we all should aim higher than some of our fan base do at times. Personally I have had enough of settling for 'its big enough for us at the moment rubbish'! Progression (is happening at the moment) and a little more ambition by way of capacity is what is and will be needed.

1977 or somewhere around that year the biscuit chompers were languishing at elm park with crowds of around 2 to 4 k with most of them looking like wafers rather than proper biscuits. But look what happened later...a new ground built fully and ambition to boot to coin a phrase. I was astonished that they had overtaken us in stature and by a higher league status. They somehow grew from being nobodies to a club regularly attracting anything between 15 to 19 k crowds. Reading isn't a real football hotbed...we are much much more real football fans than they will ever be but we must aspire and think higher than where we are today. There is customer footfall evidence of this happening right now especially with the better footballing experience happening out on the park.

And for those of you who might think that we could have just 7000 rolling around in the aisles in a 25 k stadium this is of course a possibility but we could also be stuffed in a 16k stadium with another sell out with several thousand wishing our newly built stadium was bigger. We are bigger than this with proper focussed intelligence. That's if progression is truly wanted all round.

As always I end with a side note swipe. The den as an example doesn't when only 12k is in attendance suddenly believe that their ground is to big for them...neither does many of the unpopulated stadia in the championship when the going gets tough.

Coyy's.

 

[Victor1986]

Interesting post christenedinjerich. Having your ground full - even when things are not going well on the pitch - is absolutely crucial for fan morale genereally. The Bournemouth model is an example whereby if they had of had a 35K seater stadium with only 12K fans rattling around I really don't think they would still be in the Premiership. We need to be sensible - go for 15K - with a simple way of adding a further 5K in an imaginative design & we should be OK. 25K +, as some are intimating on here, is madness!

 

[bazzer9461]

Just to be clear, he didn't specify either. He did state that 2 sites were being looked at. Another had been ruled out as being too far from the city.
I would like to think that if, and that's an if, not a when, the lease/licence is up on Grenoble Road, a temporary extension could be negotiated should any new stadium not be completed in time.

Could you see Kassam granting a temporary extension? He would want a minimum probably 5 years just so he can make more money from us

 

[bazzer9461]

Once again some of our fan base are faffing around again at capacity. As a club we struggled with the Manor in terms of expansion and then had near on two decades of being a bit of a joke ground with just the three stands. If and it's a big if we get (any) the land and then go ahead then perhaps the team behind all this will I'm sure have all the intelligence and data to build for the future properly this time around. The capacity imho will need to be at least equal or a tiny bit more than those biscuit barrels from down the M4.

The cost in building a 16k stadium to a 25k Stadium is not that great in difference as we are talking mainly in concrete and seats but the cost in perhaps adding on capacity in say two, three or four years would be far greater adding in planning and increase in labour and material costs and before anyone asks I have had a background in developing. If our club really wants to move forward we all should aim higher than some of our fan base do at times. Personally I have had enough of settling for 'its big enough for us at the moment rubbish'! Progression (is happening at the moment) and a little more ambition by way of capacity is what is and will be needed.

1977 or somewhere around that year the biscuit chompers were languishing at elm park with crowds of around 2 to 4 k with most of them looking like wafers rather than proper biscuits. But look what happened later...a new ground built fully and ambition to boot to coin a phrase. I was astonished that they had overtaken us in stature and by a higher league status. They somehow grew from being nobodies to a club regularly attracting anything between 15 to 19 k crowds. Reading isn't a real football hotbed...we are much much more real football fans than they will ever be but we must aspire and think higher than where we are today. There is customer footfall evidence of this happening right now especially with the better footballing experience happening out on the park.

And for those of you who might think that we could have just 7000 rolling around in the aisles in a 25 k stadium this is of course a possibility but we could also be stuffed in a 16k stadium with another sell out with several thousand wishing our newly built stadium was bigger. We are bigger than this with proper focussed intelligence. That's if progression is truly wanted all round.

As always I end with a side note swipe. The den as an example doesn't when only 12k is in attendance suddenly believe that their ground is to big for them...neither does many of the unpopulated stadia in the championship when the going gets tough.

Coyy's.

The problem with a 20k stadium we would have to put in another access road now we f it was at say 18 k with the chance to add on say when south of Grenoble gets houses built on the we as a club can either contribute to wards an access road and r just with the council if we added on say 7k what would be required of us if indeed anything as the developers have already built new infrastructure to accommodate the houses they’d building.

 

[bazzer9461]

Interesting post christenedinjerich. Having your ground full - even when things are not going well on the pitch - is absolutely crucial for fan morale genereally. The Bournemouth model is an example whereby if they had of had a 35K seater stadium with only 12K fans rattling around I really don't think they would still be in the Premiership. We need to be sensible - go for 15K - with a simple way of adding a further 5K in an imaginative design & we should be OK. 25K +, as some are intimating on here, is madness!

And I thought the rules of being in the premiership was to have a minimum 20k stadium

 

[Foley]

And I thought the rules of being in the premiership was to have a minimum 20k stadium

I dont think that there are such rules?
Bournemouth's ground holds around 11,000

 

[ZeroTheHero]

I have to say that IMO building a 25k+ stadium would be a huge gamble. I do accept that building a 15k stadium and then increasing the capacity later would be more expensive than building it all at once. Of course, the mitigating factor for that is that once the time came to expand you would be in a higher division and thus all income would be increased, helping to pay for it (yes, costs would increase as well). That might be unambitious, but let's see what the home support and atmosphere is like at Stadium:MK in a few weeks time. Their last Saturday home league match attracted 6,500 home fans in a venue that seats over 30,000. As well as the pretty salutary lesson of MK, who can forget the Darlington Arena? An ambitious 25,000 seater, pretty close to the city centre, limited to 10,000 capacity because of lack of access and eventually contributing to the decline and folding of the club (the new one is a phoenix club).

I'm NOT in construction, so may well be very wrong, but I would have thought that a clever initial design could provide for a (relatively) quick and (relatively) less expensive way to expand, with less risk and a better atmosphere in the time before the extra capacity was needed.

Of course, a good six months and we might need some of the extra capacity sooner than we think - and whatever size any new, well designed stadium is and wherever it is sited, it will be an improvement.

 

[Left Wing Cross]

And I thought the rules of being in the premiership was to have a minimum 20k stadium

What about Champion's League?

 

[Foley]

Hopefully any new stadium will be hugely better designed than MKs.
We took well over 4000 a few years ago and there was virtually zero atmosphere.
A stadium designed for PL and full of prawn sandwich brigade.

 

[burtonagneshall]

I think the Sheik could be near the mark with Stratfield Brake.
Although I am not ITK, people I know are speaking enthusiastically about this site, its got all the potential requirement.

 

[RyanioBirdio]

Can we talk about the parking situation yet?

 

[Sarge]

Can we talk about the parking situation yet?

Ihope the new stadium , when it eventually arrives, has low roofed stands over the home areas to ramp up the noise (and high ones where away support will be located, maybe !) , also in at least one (home) stand oxrails/ rail standing(rail seats) / safe standing or something along those lines as well.

 

[Leysboy]

Groningen in the Dutch league have a beautiful stadium. Perhaps malc could put a nice picture up. I imagine it’s in yellow and blue and would look mighty impressive.

 

[Leysboy]

[/QUOTE

Just to be clear, he didn't specify either. He did state that 2 sites were being looked at. Another had been ruled out as being too far from the city.
I would like to think that if, and that's an if, not a when, the lease/licence is up on Grenoble Road, a temporary extension could be negotiated should any new stadium not be completed in time.

The one that was too far away was in Bicester. He never said it, but that was the one ruled out. So we are down to two, whatever the locations it’s exciting to see we have an ambitious board willing to develop a new build. Let’s see what happens..

 

[Leysboy]

What about Champion's League?

Europa Lge next year, because we are going to win the EFL Cup.

 

[Big Ronaldo]

Minimum Requirements for a new ground for me are...
seats close as possible to the pitch - So close you can smell the perspiration.
Low roof to amplify sound.
Sound reflecting material at the back of the home stand.
An area of safe standing.
Seat banks design saying OUFC in yellow and blue