The Grandstand plans - a PAS Board update

s.whitey62 or something's survey

Quote :

As on another thread, please fill out the survey below!...

Hi Guys,

I've created a brief survey regarding the much talked about Higher Home Park Development.

It may not be perfectly worded but I am certain it will gauge the opinion of our supports sufficiently. Although feel free to slag it off accordingly.

Would be great if we could get the response into the 1000's.

This is a big turning point in the club's history!

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

COYG's!

hairy j wrote:

The stand isn't as big as I'd have liked but it has changed from that sketch. I'm more concerned that we have no proper training facilities in these plans. The club from the under 11s up need a state of the art training facility.

How does this revised plan with the 5 row shelf compare to the plan you saw and were really pleased with a few weeks ago h?

Well I had my half hour with Mark Jones. His title is Head of Regeneration with Akkeron, but as others have said he didn't really have much in the way of definitive answers and I strongly got the impression all he really wanted to say (and did to me) was you're getting this for free, be grateful.

Some answers. He doesn't know of any specific reason to restrict the height of the new stand other than the asthetics of the whole development and Life Centre and the constraints of the footprint area of the base being proportionate.

He had no answer to where the revenue from the retail units within the stand footprint would go but argued that it added to the value of the whole project that allowed the stand to be built.

Without overlays he couldn't say where the new boundary between the club land and development land ran. He suspected it ran down the middle of the concourse. I suspect that the ice rink butts right up to it.

Cheeky question. He had no idea what kind of profit Akkeron were looking at over the whole scheme. My point being some should be sacrificed to improve the stand design as the club acquisition had allowed for the whole scheme to exist.

Basically I wasn't impressed by the lack of firm detail. I suspect we'll end up with something pretty much along the lines of this and folk won't be as impressed as they thought they would and we'll be stuck with the continuing disappointment.

It seems the line he's been primed with re capacity is to rebuid the Devonport when necessary. He seemed to think a successful Championship club that was a council tenant would be able to finance that. Dream on.

Richard Blight wrote:

Can you imagine these boards if any part of a small stadium was out of use because of building work taking place, in what might be only one or two seasons in the Premiership.

Now that really did make I larf, you may well get a couple of seasons in the Premiership but it will be Blue and it will be Square, also selling out your ground will not be an issue unless you make it to the first round of the FA Cup and draw a big club like, well, you know who..

Lord Tisdale wrote:

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

Just how much money can you extract from the 5020 who could use it? Not enough.

Therein lies yer prob Franny, all this bleating about being able to get a few thousand extra plastics in three or four times a season at most is such a "Super Reds" herring. These extra few k are the boys who bitch about 20 quid to get in and want their kids in for a quid while blanching at paying a pound for a cuppa.

They are not worth the time and trouble.

The punters you need would be the ones sauntering pack to their seats ten minutes into the second half with the sea food sauce dripping on their designer jackets.

You boys seems so set on focussing on a few thousand plassies who couldn't normally give a fetid dingo's gonad for "Argyle", get real FFS, Shirley some of you have a basic grounding in business or an o-level in Economics, the money is in the pose and prawns, the Arse get a huge proportion of their income from the 10% of their capacity which relates to corporate seats and that is with a season ticket costing £1500+.

This complete lack of any financial realism among even your more erudite posters is starting to give me an 'eadache.

Brent knows to turn the clubs fortunes around he has to create a high value clientele, not a few thousand knobs prepared to turn up to see the Barcodes and then cheer them off to the strains of "We are the Champions" while their "own" club is slipping into relegation. He is looking for high value punters at the lowest possible set up cost, it's the clever play, he doesn't care what you lot think prattling away on here, he owns the media and that other place, that's his market place, Nikkkkkkkkkkkk and his ilk aren't on here, they are out in the real world partying in Big Gay Bear Paris.

This is one part of why the stand needs to be bigger. The more plebs that can sit on a crappy plastic seat the better for all sorts of reasons but the bigger it is the more we can fleece the prawn cocktail brigade because we can either get more of the toffs in or we can devise ever more interesting, subtle and diverse ways of separating them from their cash.

For us fans a stadium is about the view, the atmosphere, the pasties and whether we can get to a bog at halftime but to the club it is a machine which serves fans as an inverse cashpoint.

It's not just the stiffs in suits that are keen to splurge their wad on the club. Most of us are. The bigger the stand is the bigger the bar for supporters to drink their over-priced fizzy piss is and so more of them will use it.

Building the stand too small stops Brent from screwing as much matchday income as possible out of every part of the clubs support across all ages, gender and social class just as it limits the opportunities for the casual fans in every category.

Make no mistake a 5000 seat stand will be a commercial, psychological and practical disaster for us.

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

Make no mistake a 5000 seat stand will be a commercial, psychological and practical disaster for us.

See, this is what I am talking about, you are getting a brand new spangly stand with plenty of prawn sammidge facilities for free when your club hasn't got a pot to piss in and the defeater of the Armada wants to call it a "disaster".

WTF do you want for nothing ?

You were bust and going out of business when Brent came along, he is keeping you going and building you a brand new 5000ish seater stand which will probably mean you have way in excess of 10,000 empty green plastic seats for every game for the forseeable future, FFS get real, you sound like a bunch of spoiled kids who have already been sick but are still squeaming for more sweeties.

Lord Tisdale wrote:

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

Make no mistake a 5000 seat stand will be a commercial, psychological and practical disaster for us.

See, this is what I am talking about, you are getting a brand new spangly stand with plenty of prawn sammidge facilities for free when your club hasn't got a pot to piss in and the defeater of the Armada wants to call it a "disaster".

WTF do you want for nothing ?

You were bust and going out of business when Brent came along, he is keeping you going and building you a brand new 5000ish seater stand which will probably mean you have way in excess of 10,000 empty green plastic seats for every game for the forseeable future, FFS get real, you sound like a bunch of spoiled kids who have already been sick but are still squeaming for more sweeties.

Yes,i suppose the whole scenario must be quite difficult for you to grasp.

feck off LT, you love the sound of your own voice, no-one else does.

Another thought, wouldn't the higher capacity be useful for U21 internationals and the odd concert? Maybe that's worth throwing at Brent's mob?

Obviously being an Exeter fan you'd be in favour because it'll screw us up forever and you'll continue to get your two cup finals every year as we we scrap it out in the basement for all of eternity. If I was an Exeter fan I'd be all for it too.

So far we have lost everything. All the best players have been sold, the land has been sold, the ground has been half closed and we have been repeatedly bullshitted to by the club. Now we are going to lose any ambition and all hope that one day we'll be something to be proud of.

Unless the next phase of the plan is to render Home Park so inagaequate and unfit for purpose that Argyle moves out of Home Park altogether to an out of town site somewhere, Brent buys Home Park, flattens it and puts some other abomination in its place.

All we have left is our dreams. No matter how irrational they are they matter. Without them what is the point of any of it?

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

Obviously being an Exeter fan you'd be in favour because it'll screw us up forever and you'll continue to get your two cup finals every year

Would that be the "cup final" we can't get our fans interested in ?

Our only cup final this season will, god willing, be back at the New Wembley, it will feel like coming home, you boys should come along for the day out, best chance you are likely to get of seeing the place.

Greenjock wrote:

Another thought, wouldn't the higher capacity be useful for U21 internationals

Not much of a thought, the U21s played at Wycombe this week and are regular visitors to Colchester, capacity would seem to be less of an issue than being the back end of beyond.

Charlie Wood wrote:

Well I had my half hour with Mark Jones. His title is Head of Regeneration with Akkeron, but as others have said he didn't really have much in the way of definitive answers and I strongly got the impression all he really wanted to say (and did to me) was you're getting this for free, be grateful.

Some answers. He doesn't know of any specific reason to restrict the height of the new stand other than the asthetics of the whole development and Life Centre and the constraints of the footprint area of the base being proportionate.

He had no answer to where the revenue from the retail units within the stand footprint would go but argued that it added to the value of the whole project that allowed the stand to be built.

Without overlays he couldn't say where the new boundary between the club land and development land ran. He suspected it ran down the middle of the concourse. I suspect that the ice rink butts right up to it.

Cheeky question. He had no idea what kind of profit Akkeron were looking at over the whole scheme. My point being some should be sacrificed to improve the stand design as the club acquisition had allowed for the whole scheme to exist.

Basically I wasn't impressed by the lack of firm detail. I suspect we'll end up with something pretty much along the lines of this and folk won't be as impressed as they thought they would and we'll be stuck with the continuing disappointment.

It seems the line he's been primed with re capacity is to rebuid the Devonport when necessary. He seemed to think a successful Championship club that was a council tenant would be able to finance that. Dream on.

Sounds painful CW, I take it we've been proper had by the speccy jugernaught!

Lord Tisdale wrote:

Richard Blight wrote:

Can you imagine these boards if any part of a small stadium was out of use because of building work taking place, in what might be only one or two seasons in the Premiership.

Now that really did make I larf, you may well get a couple of seasons in the Premiership but it will be Blue and it will be Square, also selling out your ground will not be an issue unless you make it to the first round of the FA Cup and draw a big club like, well, you know who..

Oh perlease Tis............you lot will never be a big club in the eyes of Argiggle and you know it

Tringreen wrote:

Oh perlease Tis............you lot will never be a big club in the eyes of Argiggle and you know it

You Gargs could miss the point for England, the last thing we would want is for you to see us as a "big club", the fact that you are trailing in the wake of the little club up the road doubles, nay trebles, the pleasure. When you look at the league table and realise you are scrapping away with the likes of Accy, Barnet, AFC Womble, Shots and Turks it must be so painful when so many of you think you are a "big club", see the new grandstand thread.

Lord Tisdale wrote:

Tringreen wrote:

Oh perlease Tis............you lot will never be a big club in the eyes of Argiggle and you know it

You Gargs could miss the point for England, the last thing we would want is for you to see us as a "big club", the fact that you are trailing in the wake of the little club up the road doubles, nay trebles, the pleasure. When you look at the league table and realise you are scrapping away with the likes of Accy, Barnet, AFC Womble, Shots and Turks it must be so painful when so many of you think you are a "big club", see the new grandstand thread.

Enjoy it while it lasts dear boy.

LT, if someone came along and could redevelop the Big Bank with a smaller capacity stand with not much discernable benefit to the football club, you'd be loik 'nah, fook off you badger on crack before I pop a screwdriver in yore eyeball', and you know it.

Charlie Wood wrote:

......
Some answers. He doesn't know of any specific reason to restrict the height of the new stand other than the asthetics of the whole development and Life Centre and the constraints of the footprint area of the base being proportionate.

He had no answer to where the revenue from the retail units within the stand footprint would go but argued that it added to the value of the whole project that allowed the stand to be built.

.......

That's interesting, Charlie. When I asked him about the height of the new stand, he implied that the structure would not allow it to be any higher. He said nothing about aesthetics and because I know nothing about buildings I didn't push it.

As for where the retail units would go, like you I got the reply that we should be grateful and that those units enabled the club to get the stand for free.

If the Akkeron rep couldn't provide proper answers who can?!

It seems the normal rules of 'selling' are being applied here..

Namely, that people will say almost anything to sell something.

Czarcasm wrote:

hairy j wrote:

The stand isn't as big as I'd have liked but it has changed from that sketch. I'm more concerned that we have no proper training facilities in these plans. The club from the under 11s up need a state of the art training facility.

How does this revised plan with the 5 row shelf compare to the plan you saw and were really pleased with a few weeks ago h?

The shelf was bigger - it wasn't a shelf. The capacity would have therefore been bigger. The roof of the original was higher than the horseshoe and it looked like a grandstand. Capacity was probably about 22,000 originally.

I was going to post a bit yesterday as I was of work but was iddling with this new useless wifi router that virgin put in. 60 meg connection..... lol. I've got it up to 36 mbs over wi-fi but spent about five hours farting around with channel settings and moving the router around.

Anyway - it was busy at the theatre on Thursday and it was good to see proper plans.

I've not read much of the responses on here or pasoti so forgive me if this has been said but one thing I was surprised at was there was no real media space - i.e. where cameras might go. From our Championship days, cameras went in the gantry in front of the directors box and put on a platform in the Barn Park end (which meant at least an entire row was cordoned off). If we're going up the leagues in the near future as everyone wants us to, we'd be wise to think of the future media revenue and get that in place.

One thing non-football related too is music. When PAFC owned the stadium, there were a few concerts - not my cup of tea really but they generated income. There's not much in the south west that would attract bands like Take That etc. To come here and our ground could have been used for that close season. If you had a concert every other week, it would bring in a lot of cash and a lot of tourism and people staying the night in Plymouth but the new stand doesn't really seem to be geared towards that. Imagine how much cash it would generate for James Brent, PCC and the local economy if we had, close season a series of concerts - Metallica, Take That, Bon Jovi, etc.

I'm not disatisfied with it - it's better than what we had but it would be nice to have seen a massive stand - a proper grandstand. I'm glad it's being done as looking at the Mayflower on a match day is incredibly sad. That's where me and sensible stood when I was a'kid and I miss the memories of being told I couldn't have a mars bar, being burnt by fags and seeing men urinate where they stood. Proper football that.

hairy j wrote:

Czarcasm wrote:

hairy j wrote:

The stand isn't as big as I'd have liked but it has changed from that sketch. I'm more concerned that we have no proper training facilities in these plans. The club from the under 11s up need a state of the art training facility.

How does this revised plan with the 5 row shelf compare to the plan you saw and were really pleased with a few weeks ago h?

The shelf was bigger - it wasn't a shelf. The capacity would have therefore been bigger. The roof of the original was higher than the horseshoe and it looked like a grandstand. Capacity was probably about 22,000 originally.

I was going to post a bit yesterday as I was of work but was iddling with this new useless wifi router that virgin put in. 60 meg connection..... lol. I've got it up to 36 mbs over wi-fi but spent about five hours farting around with channel settings and moving the router around.

Anyway - it was busy at the theatre on Thursday and it was good to see proper plans.

I've not read much of the responses on here or pasoti so forgive me if this has been said but one thing I was surprised at was there was no real media space - i.e. where cameras might go. From our Championship days, cameras went in the gantry in front of the directors box and put on a platform in the Barn Park end (which meant at least an entire row was cordoned off). If we're going up the leagues in the near future as everyone wants us to, we'd be wise to think of the future media revenue and get that in place.

One thing non-football related too is music. When PAFC owned the stadium, there were a few concerts - not my cup of tea really but they generated income. There's not much in the south west that would attract bands like Take That etc. To come here and our ground could have been used for that close season. If you had a concert every other week, it would bring in a lot of cash and a lot of tourism and people staying the night in Plymouth but the new stand doesn't really seem to be geared towards that. Imagine how much cash it would generate for James Brent, PCC and the local economy if we had, close season a series of concerts - Metallica, Take That, Bon Jovi, etc.

I'm not disatisfied with it - it's better than what we had but it would be nice to have seen a massive stand - a proper grandstand. I'm glad it's being done as looking at the Mayflower on a match day is incredibly sad. That's where me and sensible stood when I was a'kid and I miss the memories of being told I couldn't have a mars bar, being burnt by fags and seeing men urinate where they stood. Proper football that.

Oh, now that brought smile! You forgot that bit where the faver rolls up the programme and send the bey down to the iron railings!

Well spotted by Greenblooded on pasoti confirming what we already knew that this is all about a land grab, not a new stand.

Quote :

What's blatantly obvious looking at the Section drawing, is how much brought forward the stand is compared to the Mayflower, "stealing space" from behind to enlarge the development space. This compromises the ability to obtain a decent 2 tier stand, as seats are too close to the pitch & would need to be extremely steeply inclined to see the near touchline..

Charlie Wood wrote:

Well I had my half hour with Mark Jones. His title is Head of Regeneration with Akkeron, but as others have said he didn't really have much in the way of definitive answers and I strongly got the impression all he really wanted to say (and did to me) was you're getting this for free, be grateful.

Some answers. He doesn't know of any specific reason to restrict the height of the new stand other than the asthetics of the whole development and Life Centre and the constraints of the footprint area of the base being proportionate.

He had no answer to where the revenue from the retail units within the stand footprint would go but argued that it added to the value of the whole project that allowed the stand to be built.

Without overlays he couldn't say where the new boundary between the club land and development land ran. He suspected it ran down the middle of the concourse. I suspect that the ice rink butts right up to it.

Cheeky question. He had no idea what kind of profit Akkeron were looking at over the whole scheme. My point being some should be sacrificed to improve the stand design as the club acquisition had allowed for the whole scheme to exist.

Basically I wasn't impressed by the lack of firm detail. I suspect we'll end up with something pretty much along the lines of this and folk won't be as impressed as they thought they would and we'll be stuck with the continuing disappointment.

It seems the line he's been primed with re capacity is to rebuid the Devonport when necessary. He seemed to think a successful Championship club that was a council tenant would be able to finance that. Dream on.

Brent is getting £10m from PCC and another £20m to deliver the ice rink and other projects, does he ever pay for anything he buys?

Mock Cuncher wrote:

LT, if someone came along and could redevelop the Big Bank with a smaller capacity stand with not much discernable benefit to the football club, you'd be loik 'nah, fook off you badger on crack before I pop a screwdriver in yore eyeball', and you know it.

Sorry Mockers but a part of the "Poultice Plan", to which I subscribe, provides for the Big Bank to be reduced in size and moved forward to provide more space for an enabling development, that plan would have resulted in a capacity pretty similar to the current one in a far more user friendly configuration, I'm for all the development we could afford not pie in the sky Billy Big Bollox delusions of grandeur.

"We will see the club endowed with assets that will create cash-flow that will complement the football cash-flows and the aspirational legacy for the club is to do a new grandstand which isn't just a grandstand but it has facilities in there which will generate an income going forward...."

All I can see for generating additional income is the classroom (see the PAFC web-site for the offer of a new coaching degree) and the conference facilities. Without any financial projections how can this be judged? The apparent "theft" of grandstand space to develop retail units for the commercial development of the site unconnected with Argyle seems to me to be removing a substantial income-generating possibility.

Spotlight interview February 2012

Another thing has occurred to me about the hotel. Some time ago Brent, I think it was him anyway, said something along the lines of Plymouth being poorly served by its stock of quality hotels. I think we can all agree about that. Plymouth has several 3* hotels (Jury's Inn, Continental, Duke Of Cornwall, Quality Hotel, Copthorne) but no 4* and definitely no 5*.

So what is proposed in the HHP plan? Another 3* hotel.

So it isn't just the stand that is being downgraded compared to what we were led to believe.