2018: So what now for Villa Park redevelopment?

[DB]

A clean of the North Stand won't do much good, it's like polishing a turd. It's out-dated a looks shit both inside and outside. When you see some of the other developments around and see what can be done.

[willywombat]

Man City weren't always selling out at Maine Road when Eastlands became available. They could have used the same logic.

Back then (less than ten years ago) they used to get low/mid 30ks. Today they get 45,000+
And did so before the Sheikh started throwing money about.

Sunderland didn't always sell out at Roker Park with a capacity of just 22,000.
Today they regularly top 40,000

Bolton weren't selling out Burnden Park. They rarely sell out the Reebook either, but they do get better gates today.

The point to all this? If you cap yourself by only making decisions based on current circumstances you reduce the potential to evolve and expand. That's something Rinder and co understood instinctively but the crew who followed years after much less so. It's that mindset -more than anything else- that needs to change, the make do and mend/ happy just to settle default position.

I doubt very much we'd sell out more than a handful of times initially if the capacity was closer to 50,000. But then again I can't say for certain. A bigger capacity would give us the opportunity to offer more fan friendly prices and higher away allocations, so I think topping 45,000 5-6 times per season wouldn't be out of the question in the short/medium term.

That's the thing, we wouldn't need to be selling out every game to make it viable. It would be a long term commitment and would pay for itself in time.

The North Stand as is is an eyesore and doesn't reflect well on the club. It needs to go.

That sums it up for me, as soon as you settle for staying where you are and not moving forward then you start to slip backwards. God knows, we've all seen it happen before

[TimTheVillain]

A clean of the North Stand won't do much good, it's like polishing a turd. It's out-dated a looks shit both inside and outside. When you see some of the other developments around and see what can be done.

Total carbuncle of a stand.

Needs replacing, but I am with the 'let's get the team right first' shouts.

We can't get 42k gates for the Blose at the moment, so any money just has to be spent on players -- been here before on so many occasions.

[Villa'Zawg]

According to the England bid document we were going to spend 46M USD and increase the gross capacity from 42,788 to 47,300.

[Andy_Lochhead_in_the_air]

It couldnt and wouldnt happen, but I would love a big open terrace and a wooden half time scoreboard in the corner.

[ronshirt]

It couldnt and wouldnt happen, but I would love a big open terrace and a wooden half time scoreboard in the corner.

And a very ornate building set at a right angle selling Bovril and ready salted crisps.

[KevinGage]

Open terrace and a wooden halftime scoreboard might be out of the question, but a single tier stand could be both contemporary and a nod to the past if done right.

There are a few examples in Germany:

Dortmund




Kaiserslautern





Dortmund's stadium in particular is an interesting mix of the old and new. They've managed to give a certain sense of uniformity with four stands that all had different dimensions and angles. You can still tell there were four separate stands once, as per most UK grounds. But the modifications still leave the ground with character, unlike the souless identikit wrap arounds or grounds with separate but near enough identical stands on each side.

[old man villa fan]

Man City weren't always selling out at Maine Road when Eastlands became available. They could have used the same logic.

Back then (less than ten years ago) they used to get low/mid 30ks. Today they get 45,000+
And did so before the Sheikh started throwing money about.

Sunderland didn't always sell out at Roker Park with a capacity of just 22,000.
Today they regularly top 40,000

Bolton weren't selling out Burnden Park. They rarely sell out the Reebook either, but they do get better gates today.

The point to all this? If you cap yourself by only making decisions based on current circumstances you reduce the potential to evolve and expand. That's something Rinder and co understood instinctively but the crew who followed years after much less so. It's that mindset -more than anything else- that needs to change, the make do and mend/ happy just to settle default position.

I doubt very much we'd sell out more than a handful of times initially if the capacity was closer to 50,000. But then again I can't say for certain. A bigger capacity would give us the opportunity to offer more fan friendly prices and higher away allocations, so I think topping 45,000 5-6 times per season wouldn't be out of the question in the short/medium term.

That's the thing, we wouldn't need to be selling out every game to make it viable. It would be a long term commitment and would pay for itself in time.

The North Stand as is is an eyesore and doesn't reflect well on the club. It needs to go.

Would agree with this.

The last 10% of tickets are always the hardest to sell as they tend to be in less desirable parts of the ground.  Also, some people just cannot be bothered if they have to go out of their way to get a ticket.

Increasing the capacity to 50,000 would give us spare capacity to give youngsters the opportunity to come at low prices, thus selling the club to the fans of the future.  Also, it would allow us in the short term to have a better spread of pricing to help the fans that are finding it a struggle with current prices.  The lower North Stand seems to have been a success because of this.

I think that attendances will grow if the capacity is increased.  If floating supporters knew they could get down to the ground the day before the game and buy a ticket if they fancied going to a game that weekend, I believe this would see more people coming to the games, rather than having to think about getting a ticket a couple of weeks before when we play a more attractive team and we are pushing to near capacity.

Unless we are really successful, we will struggle to sell out 50,000 every week but there will be times when we would sell out.  Other matches would give the club opportunity to come up with new ideas to boost attendances, whether it is 'kids for a quid' or incentives of low priced tickets coupled with guaranteed tickets for bigger games.

I know there will be some people that will say that it is not fair on season ticket holders who pay regular prices but at the end of the day you have to decide whether you think the season ticket price is fair in its own right and you are willing to pay it so that you have the same seat, guaranteed seats etc.  The idea of increasing capacity is ultimately to benefit the club and try and make it more successful and that's what we all want.  If that means others paying less than you do, that can't be wrong, can it?

The overriding factor though, is that it should not hinder our ability to compete on the pitch.

[KevinGage]

A bigger capacity means that we could -in theory- look to reduce the cost of season tickets. Or at least provide parts of the ground where they are cheaper.

No existing ST holder should necessarily be inconvenienced or miss out financially and it could increase the volume of season tickets we actually sell (in line with a degree of success or at least progress on the pitch) that would obviously swell the overall average come the end of the year.

One other point, though we had quite a healthy attendance > percentage of total capacity ratio mid-late 90's it wouldn't be right to say that we always sold out, despite a capacity of only 39k +  Yet when the capacity was increased to 43,000 the average went up - and the year 2000+ is hardly a golden period in the clubs history.

[brian green]

Many years ago when I was in regular contact with Doug Ellis and I was involved in finding suitable sites for a major hotel chain the thinking seemed to be that a multi purpose development of the North Stand location could be an attractive proposition.

In more optimistic times an hotel combined with corporate facilities and leisure use coupled with a new stand facing the pitch could be viable but that level of land development confidence will be a long time returning, if ever.

Villa's land will always be of interest to developers due to the proximity of the motorway network.

[Pete3206]

A bigger capacity means that we could -in theory- look to reduce the cost of season tickets. Or at least provide parts of the ground where they are cheaper.

I remember Arsenal fans thinking the same.

[Bad English]

It's not more seats the North Stand requires, it's more legroom. I'd rather fly to Canada in the rear seats of a Thomas Cook aircraft than sit in there.

[JJ-AV]

I'd love Randy to make the Holte one tier.

[PeterWithe]

You wonder whether we may have missed a trick my not not looking at the feasability of developing something with Tesco, might not have been enough car parking space though

[KevinGage]

A bigger capacity means that we could -in theory- look to reduce the cost of season tickets. Or at least provide parts of the ground where they are cheaper.

I remember Arsenal fans thinking the same.

I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest Arsenal supporters (those in the traditional North London/Hertfordshire catchment area at least) probably have -on average- higher incomes  than their Birmingham counterparts.

Arsenal have also had many years of consistent CL qualification plus the attraction of players like Fabregas, Arshavin, Van Persie and co.

I'm not sure I'd ever want to see us charge £893 – £1,825 for season tickets, but if we had at least some of the above in place the demand might be there to (at least partly) justify it.