NSWE Investment

[Dante Lavelli]

Is there any mention of safe standing in the new designs?

[Villan82]

Seeing people complain about reduced capacity during the construction.

Well, unless my memory is playing up, the new Witton Lane, new Holte and new Trinity were all built with minimal disruption. The lower tier of the new Holte was available very early in 1995-95. I seem to remember the new Trinity, which is a fairly complicated structure, had fans on seats around bonfire night 2000 and was fully open by early 2001. SO, half a season of disruption- at most. I am sure a new North Stand would be quite similar. The 7,000 seats we would lose from demolition would probably be available within a short amount of time.

Without checking, I can't recall Liverpool having reduced capacity while there new main stand was built?

[SoccerHQ]

Also would they build behind it first and maybe knock it down when they do the bottom tier . i guess it depends on what design they are  building

Would make sense.

From memory the Trinity was brutally knocked down the day after the final game of the season in 99-00 yet parts of it were open for the first home game of the next season and then think it was fully open by Boxing day (at least the seating parts).

So something would have to go wrong in the building process for the whole stand to be out of action for a full season so I imagine it would be open in stages and can build up season tickets from there. Probably by September-October capacity would be back up to 42k so you wouldn't lose anything for most of the season.

Would imagine for the few months of limited capacity away allocation would be cut so probably just upper tier in the Witton perhaps?

[LukeJames]

As long as we don't get the same guys that are doing Craven Cottage. that stands seems to have been in development for years.

[Ads]

Liverpool built their main stand over the top of the old. They're currently doing the same with the Anfield Road Stand.

It might well be possible to do the same jerez as there's fundamentally 50% of fresh capacity unoccupied given the narrow upper tier.

[eamonn]

Any sign of our owners at the game today? I think I still have palpitations about Tony Xia...I'm always hoping Nas or Wes only turn up at VP for our wins, to make sure they feel the best of the Villa atmosphere and remind themselves that they're in this for the long haul.

[Chico Hamilton III]

Seeing people complain about reduced capacity during the construction.

Well, unless my memory is playing up, the new Witton Lane, new Holte and new Trinity were all built with minimal disruption. The lower tier of the new Holte was available very early in 1995-95.

I don’t think we averaged 30,000 in any season for over a decade up to ‘95 so much less demand for the reduced capacity during the redevelopments. It will be a totally different story this time

[exigo]

Slightly surprised by the planning application taking so long, after what Purslow said before Christmas.
Ideal would be get the plans in this Spring, knock down the North the day after we play Palace. Get enough space cleared to get the Foo Fighters stage in without issue. Have the first seats available near the start of the season, knowing that you have a month of no games because of the world cup – so almost up to full capacity by January.

[LeeB]

Slightly surprised by the planning application taking so long, after what Purslow said before Christmas.
Ideal would be get the plans in this Spring, knock down the North the day after we play Palace. Get enough space cleared to get the Foo Fighters stage in without issue. Have the first seats available near the start of the season, knowing that you have a month of no games because of the world cup – so almost up to full capacity by January.

Could we not demolish the stand with the Foo Fighters in it, killing two birds with one stone and doing the world a great favour?

[DB]

Really hope a Museum is in the plans. A club with our illustrious history should have one.

[ADVILLAFAN]

Really hope a Museum is in the plans. A club with our illustrious history should have one.

And a Cheese Room, to get one over on Tottenham

[exigo]

Really hope a Museum is in the plans. A club with our illustrious history should have one.

And a Cheese Room, to get one over on Tottenham

Opened by James Bree?

[Rory]

Really hope a Museum is in the plans. A club with our illustrious history should have one.

As well as football, I'd love the museum to also cover the social history of the area and Birmingham in general: industry, multiculturalism, architecture, the arts. And an audio accompaniment of some exclusively commissioned Benjamin Zephaniah works.

[sid1964]

I would imagine that the Birmingham museum would cover all the above Rory

We are a football club lets get the museum to focus on Aston Villa

[algy]

I like the idea of a museum, but ...

Who's going to visit it exactly?  OK, probably all of us at some point because we're Villa supporters.  But how many times are we going to pay it a visit?

It's not going to change massively year-on-year, so maybe for season ticket holders / regular visitors, maybe once every 2 or 3 years being very optimistic.  Visiting supporters?  Maybe, but how many times have any of us have been to the Manchester United museum?  I'd guess a sum total in the region of 0.  Random visitors to Birmingham?   That's possibly your biggest thing, but I can't see that being huge hoards of people.

My feeling is that a museum is only really viable if we become something that, honestly, few of us actually want - a club that tourists visit to take in a game as a one-off event.  That necessarily brings with it a rubbish atmosphere, since anyone going will be more interested in taking selfies than anything on show (not knocking that, I went down to London a couple of weekends ago and spent most of the time taking photos of my little girl in front of landmarks, not actually engaging with those landmarks -- it's no different, it's just maybe not we want particularly).