My Take On Mr Brent & His Plans

There seems to be a lack of excitable 'yes' threads from the redevelopment of HHP (after today's meeting) so I assume I'm safe here. No apologies for being wrong because initial plans were shite anyway.

Mr Brent as we know is a proper 'merchant', not shy of using free labour (proven) and not shy of playing hard as redundancies would prove. All talk of 'new jobs' being created should be treated with caution, it's his sort who'd have the disabled 'slaving'. Talking of the disabled, it appears their place is the shelf, up top with very little to none? facilities.

Just to further show what a 'merchant' he really is, he is proposing it's easy to redevelop the 'horseshoe'. We always knew it could be expanded (or at least we were told that) so it's not exactly breathtaking news is it? With his plans of 'boxing us in' on 3 sides of the stadium, there should only be one way he can defend this, do it (whilst leaving us with the capability of expanding to a minimum 30k capacity if needed in future)!

PAFC can do much better than what is currently being offered. According to one poster (on PASOTI) who I wont name for now, there is 'up to' £8m in grants for building educational facilities. This should show what PAFC can achieve with or without someone clearly in it for profit alone.

Just to be clear, I don't oppose developing HHP, I oppose somebody with no affilliation to football (or Plymouth) limiting the progress of PAFC, in OUR park, for evermore. Over 13k whilst near bottom of 4th tier should be enough to tell the 'merchant' to disappear and come back when he has something serious to say!

well said

I have just had a shufti at the plans to take us to 22,200 involving building over the horse shoe, this involves two rows of fire escapes which will sit outside of the red brick wall of the existing stands and extend it by about four metres. Is the road going to be moved?
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I just don't buy Brent's ambitions for the club or believe what he has to say, and I have been to a couple of his meet the fans sessions.

Any plans for HHP should exclude the horseshoe, it's nothing to do with HHP and shouldn't be used to try and palm us off with a cheap option.

Real 'Grandstand' or GTFO!

The Horseshoe extension (plan 2b) is all pie in the sky as far as I'm concerned as in reality it will never happen due to the complexities alluded to in the presentation. And of course the cost. As is Plan 2c which is adding a sizeable second tier to the Devonport (which I don't mind saying would actually look quite good - link below). But NOW is the time to build it right for the future! Get it right now! Once it's built that's what we'll have for at least 50 years! (IF we survive)a promotion challenge in L2 next season, which is not impossible going by the way Jon Sheridan has performed since he's been here, after 5 long years of miserable decline and disaster would attract a lot of support back to HP. The timeline for the new stand is for a Nov 2014 opening. I can visualise supporters not being able to get tickets even as early as the latter part of next season. You may laugh but there were some near near full houses in 2001/2.

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Amongst the excuses for not building a proper Grandstand is it shouldn't be higher than the Life Centre. Fine, stick the fekn Ice Rink on top of the Life Centre, problem solved.

With the Demport plan it looks like an office junior has been allowed to play with the autocad for the afternoon, I could have done a better drawing with a scale rule at home in an hour or two.
Anyway the point is, Brent is gaining extra retail units within the footprint of the grandstand, he is pinching an extra piece of the car park to put his hotel and other developments on, if he wants an easy ride he needs to give us the extra few thousand seats we are asking for now. The cost of the new stand comes in at about £2k a seat but I bet that includes all the corporate and retail space as well, adding a couple of thousand now is the best way forward. The capacity at 23,500 if we reach the prem will be too small anyway, how many seats could you sell when Man. utd. Come to town? Brent and Jones have grand visions for HHP let's not leave HP itself out of it all?

Why shouldn't the grandstand be higher than the Life Centre?

Skyline is important in planning applications, obviously the life centre got the nod because they wanted to dominate the skyline with it.

Forgetting all the my house is bigger than your house bollox, they should all be working together. Argyle always stood out for miles around, especially during evening matches, the Life Centre could never be so imposing no matter how tall. Argyle combined with all proposed developments could see masses turning out week in week out. Build it big!

Very poor excuse - just dominate the skyline with the grandstand then. You can see St James Park rediculously mahoosive main stand from all over Newcastle- it towers above everything.

I don't get this "Shouldn't be higher than the Life Centre" at all, why not ? it's not like there is any housing nearby to affect & frankly, any building which takes the focus away from the carbuncle of a life centre has got to be welcomed

Sounds like a very weak excuse to me.

Looking at the end view plan for the new stand it looks like the top tier should normally be much bigger but has been cut down in the plans.

There is no way extending the horseshoe later would be cheaper than doing the job properly now & we all know Brent is just trying to placate us with no intention of ever extending the horseshoe.

A full height two tier grandstand standing proud above all surrounding buildings with an illuminated PLYMOUTH ARGYLE sign on the back would look splendid.

If the retail units are built within the existing grandstand footprint (I always understood that everything within that footprint was ours) then I want to know if the PCC will sanction what, in effect, will be stealing their property. This being in addition to stealing income that should belong to the club, it makes the whole thing dodgy in my opinion!

I'm assuming the retail units are a sweetener for PCC, it'll be for them to decide whether the rent is additional income or a part of PAFC's rent? Not that it matters with a tiny stand and an ice rink built right up against it.

knecht wrote:

If the retail units are built within the existing grandstand footprint (I always understood that everything within that footprint was ours) then I want to know if the PCC will sanction what, in effect, will be stealing their property. This being in addition to stealing income that should belong to the club, it makes the whole thing dodgy in my opinion!

What about the land surrounding the Grandstand but within the current wall to the car park Knecht ? Do you know what the deal on that was ?, as it seems all of that will be taken away.

Going back to capacity, it looks like an extra 10 rows (2000 seats) could be accommodated in the top tier without encroaching past the rear wall, extra height would be around 6 metres

nandos and costa coffee are my guess for retail outlets, Maybe a tesco express too.

So how can Brent or rather his rep at that theatre royal say the horseshoe cant be extended as it wasnt designed to be and would cost too much and the road would stunt the size too. So how come Brent is now suddenly saying it can be?

The stand must be built for purpose now as there is no way it can be improve in the years to come due to the outside complexes. Brent will leave once the development is complete thats pretty much evident but he shouldnt be allowed to screw the club over for years to come with this poor stand plan.

Angry of Manchester wrote:

So how can Brent or rather his rep at that theatre royal say the horseshoe cant be extended as it wasnt designed to be and would cost too much and the road would stunt the size too. So how come Brent is now suddenly saying it can be?

I heard somewhere that Barr Construction said the foundations for Phase I were not made substantial enough to support any future extensions as this wasn't part of the spec at the time.

I had understood that the income from the retail units within the grandstand together with income from the increased number of seats and the conferencing facilities were going to make the club sustainable. How do the current plans make the club sustainable - let alone pay for the possible add-ons being spoken of after the building of the new stand is completed?

Coxside_Green wrote:

I'm assuming the retail units are a sweetener for PCC, it'll be for them to decide whether the rent is additional income or a part of PAFC's rent? Not that it matters with a tiny stand and an ice rink built right up against it.

If rent is to be paid directly to PAFC or is to be offset against money paid to PCC as owners then that might be acceptable. That would remove the vagaries of commercial income. It would be predictable income that could easily be budgeted for. It would be important that the rental paid was at the risk of the tenant - ie Akkeron - in order to avoid letting voids should the project struggle up there.

However, I'm not holding my breath.

Freathy wrote:

Angry of Manchester wrote:

So how can Brent or rather his rep at that theatre royal say the horseshoe cant be extended as it wasnt designed to be and would cost too much and the road would stunt the size too. So how come Brent is now suddenly saying it can be?

I heard somewhere that Barr Construction said the foundations for Phase I were not made substantial enough to support any future extensions as this wasn't part of the spec at the time.

someone is bullshitting either way whether its brent or barr.

The Akkeron rep at the Royal stated categorically to me & apparently to others that, other than a few seats (approx 2,500) at the back of the horseshoe, it wasn't possible to simply add to those stands.

But those plans on GoS suggest otherwise.

What is going on!?

And what are these retail units going to sell pray? how are they going to make ends meet? just walk around the city centre and count the empty shops.

They will not surrvive

Happy Daze wrote:

And what are these retail units going to sell pray? how are they going to make ends meet? just walk around the city centre and count the empty shops.

They will not surrvive

I made a guess on what they maybe already but again based on what is going up to be built up there you wont be far off a costa/starbucks/cafenero, a nandos/or another fastfood outlet other possibly a ivor dewney type place, a tesco express/corner shop and not forgetting the clubshop.