Quote from: john e on December 21, 2017, 06:27:57 PMQuote from: wittonwarrior on December 21, 2017, 01:03:13 PMLeave our villa park alone, don’t want the corners filled in, don’t want any new stand. Loves villa park Agree on the corners but I wouldn't be against something new in the witton roadWitton Road? Schoolboy error son!!
Quote from: wittonwarrior on December 21, 2017, 01:03:13 PMLeave our villa park alone, don’t want the corners filled in, don’t want any new stand. Loves villa park Agree on the corners but I wouldn't be against something new in the witton road
Leave our villa park alone, don’t want the corners filled in, don’t want any new stand. Loves villa park
Oh, and start calling the Witton Lane stand the Witton Lane stand again!
What kind of things actually get built to build a sporting area, though? It sounds a bit pie in the sky, really.
Given this is Birmingham we're talking about I'd like to see sports research centres and high-end manufacturing for sports equipment. That's the legacy that Birmingham should always aim for, we push the boundaries and build the future.
If you follow the A34 from Aston University up to the Alexandra Stadium thats a massive area for potential development / improvement including the area around Villa Park. If you look on Google Maps there is quite a lot of vacant land, steel warehouses and run-down public housing. All of that could be improved with a master plan for the area that brings an identity and a purpose for the area built on sport and recreation facilities alongside rebuilding and improving housing, transport links (eg mass transit system along the A34) and so on. Villa should be a very large part of that, to make this area the centre for sport in the Midlands. That is what the legacy of 2022 should be.The Jewellery Quarter has a definite identity, Salford in Manchester was rebuilt as a 'Media Hub', Stratford as a sports centre and new residential area, Canary Wharf as a financial centre etc and there are numerous examples around the world. The main thing is for the games to create a theme which can then be built on. Birmingham and the Midlands as a whole would benefit enormously if this is done in the right way. The risk if its done poorly is that it just ends up mirroring the mistakes made in the 1960s.
It’s great news for the city and starts to give a bit of glimpse into what Xia’s been hinting at and what was suggested by Hollis/Lerner during the sale. He’s clearly also been networking hard to ensure Villa Park and indeed the entire area gets rebuilt and regenerated. What Man City have been able to accomplish is astonishing and I’m not expecting that. But done right it can vault us into a very exciting new era in the next 10 years.