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Author Topic: Villa Park Redevelopment  (Read 528610 times)

Offline PeterWithe

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Re: Villa Park Redevelopment
« Reply #135 on: March 07, 2021, 09:27:11 AM »
Are there many stands at grounds listed? I think the cottage at Fulham was/is, not a stand though of course.

Offline exigo

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Re: Villa Park Redevelopment
« Reply #136 on: March 07, 2021, 10:52:28 AM »
At least two of the stands down the road are listing.

Online LeeB

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Re: Villa Park Redevelopment
« Reply #137 on: March 07, 2021, 10:58:10 AM »
At least two of the stands down the road are listing.

They saved the back to backs in Hurst St , so there is a precedent for saving slum dwellings.

Offline Marlon From Bearwood

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Re: Villa Park Redevelopment
« Reply #138 on: March 07, 2021, 11:01:52 AM »
I’d love us to replace the North Stand with a large, steep single-tier end, similar to Spurs or the Anfield Kop. Maybe the capacity could be slightly bigger than the Kop so we could say that both ends of our ground are bigger and better than the stand that the football world fawns over.

Should we need to replace lost executive box facilities then we could build another tower with balconies in one corner, similar to the Holte / Trinity corner.

Online dave.woodhall

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Re: Villa Park Redevelopment
« Reply #139 on: March 07, 2021, 11:11:48 AM »
Is there any reason why the Trinity Road wasn’t listed as a building of historical interest? Are there any stands in the football league that can boast such a listing? My only recollection of any commitment to maintaining the fabric of Trinity Road stand is hazy to say the least but I am sure that Ansell did give some assurances, but as DW has said they were probably subject to interpretation. The only thing I did find was an article written by Mac in When Saturday Comes back in 2001. Whatever, it was an act of vandalism which I will never forgive HDE for.

It couldn't be listed because it had been altered too much.

Offline PGW

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Re: Villa Park Redevelopment
« Reply #140 on: March 07, 2021, 11:15:23 AM »
At least two of the stands down the road are listing.

The not much Kop and the Tilting End

Online Chris Smith

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Re: Villa Park Redevelopment
« Reply #141 on: March 07, 2021, 11:26:56 AM »
Is there any reason why the Trinity Road wasn’t listed as a building of historical interest? Are there any stands in the football league that can boast such a listing? My only recollection of any commitment to maintaining the fabric of Trinity Road stand is hazy to say the least but I am sure that Ansell did give some assurances, but as DW has said they were probably subject to interpretation. The only thing I did find was an article written by Mac in When Saturday Comes back in 2001. Whatever, it was an act of vandalism which I will never forgive HDE for.

It couldn't be listed because it had been altered too much.

That’s why a building being listed is not necessarily an advantage. On the one hand it offers protection against the worst excesses of architectural vandalism but it is also a barrier to essential modernisation. In a pervious job I came up against this in trying to install modern ICT systems into a large Grade I listed Victorian building. I reckon that it doubled the cost and tripled the timescale.

Offline FatSam

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Re: Villa Park Redevelopment
« Reply #142 on: March 08, 2021, 01:30:59 AM »
The demolition of the old Trinity very neatly illustrates DE’s corner shop mentality. A long-term plan would’ve been necessary to retain it, conceived even before the Holte End and Witton Lane stands were redeveloped, in order to compensate for the lower capacity and reduced facilities when compared to a complete new build. Mr Aston Villa didn’t have this vision, he approached each stand as a stand-alone project, one after the other.

I enjoyed listening to Gary Naylor contextualising Aston Villa’s early 80s success in the brilliant Nessun Dorma podcast, touching on the London and Manchester press, and the role of Villa Park in the collective football consciousness.

I always think that Birmingham has a strange relationship with its past, and doesn’t value its own history enough. Perhaps the fact that Manzoni’s destruction of parts of the historic city was intended to usher in a progressive future, but instead accompanied economic downturn, is in some way to blame. You might think that either (like Manzoni) there wasn’t anything valuable to lose, or (like his opponents) that much of what was valuable had been lost. Villa Park is almost a microcosm of this, with HDE in the Manzoni role.
« Last Edit: March 08, 2021, 07:54:39 AM by FatSam »

Online algy

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Re: Villa Park Redevelopment
« Reply #143 on: March 08, 2021, 09:14:41 AM »
The demolition of the old Trinity very neatly illustrates DE’s corner shop mentality. A long-term plan would’ve been necessary to retain it, conceived even before the Holte End and Witton Lane stands were redeveloped, in order to compensate for the lower capacity and reduced facilities when compared to a complete new build. Mr Aston Villa didn’t have this vision, he approached each stand as a stand-alone project, one after the other.

I enjoyed listening to Gary Naylor contextualising Aston Villa’s early 80s success in the brilliant Nessun Dorma podcast, touching on the London and Manchester press, and the role of Villa Park in the collective football consciousness.

I always think that Birmingham has a strange relationship with its past, and doesn’t value its own history enough. Perhaps the fact that Manzoni’s destruction of parts of the historic city was intended to usher in a progressive future, but instead accompanied economic downturn, is in some way to blame. You might think that either (like Manzoni) there wasn’t anything valuable to lose, or (like his opponents) that much of what was valuable had been lost. Villa Park is almost a microcosm of this, with HDE in the Manzoni role.
It seems to be a running theme with big cities.  Manchester's even worse for it - it's as if they're ashamed of it's past as an industrial city and are intent on knocking all the life & soul out of the place.  Really don't understand it, because personally I love that victorian, red brick architecture.

I've said this before to several groups of people - on the railway between Brum & Wolves, towards the Wolves end, there is (or was) a rail/canal interchange.  It's maybe not totally stunning or anything, but to me it's a really interesting bit of industrial heritage.  In most places rail replaced the canals, but in the WM there was at least a proportion of industry that was as well, or better, served by canals for perhaps up to the era of mass road transport.  It's just been left to decay, though, rather than saying that actually there's something interesting & unique about this place.  That it might be worth questioning why that was the case, and then maybe seeing if parallels can be drawn with other walks of life.  You know, people might learn something if you show them things they can learn from .. it's infuriating.

Anyway, rant about that aside.  I know it's heresy, but I don't really mind that the old Trinity Road stand was demolished.  What I do mind is that no parts of the old stand were incorporated in to the new one, and the new one is - in comparison - utterly bland.  I just don't get it at all.  Surely, with any football club, your ground is a massive part of the club's identity - much more than players or managers, which with only ever temporary (with a vanishingly small number of exceptions - Stanley Matthews, Bill Shankly, or William McGregor from our own parish).  I just don't get why you wouldn't make sure that all of your stands, but particularly your main stand, don't scream out at the top of their voice to make sure every player wants to play there, every manager wants to manage there, and every fan wants to go there.

Offline Ads

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Re: Villa Park Redevelopment
« Reply #144 on: March 08, 2021, 09:33:50 AM »
You couldn't retain it. It was small and pokey with restricted views owing to the posts. It had a lovely facade, but given how small it was, it would have been impossible to keep it in the footprint of a significantly larger stand.

It would have been nice to have copied the exterior of the Holte and built something like that in homage, with stained glass perhaps on the first level etc.

What was built took Lerner to finish mind, so there's no doubt HDE did it on the cheap.

Online ChicagoLion

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Re: Villa Park Redevelopment
« Reply #145 on: March 08, 2021, 09:56:25 AM »
You couldn't retain it. It was small and pokey with restricted views owing to the posts. It had a lovely facade, but given how small it was, it would have been impossible to keep it in the footprint of a significantly larger stand.

It would have been nice to have copied the exterior of the Holte and built something like that in homage, with stained glass perhaps on the first level etc.

What was built took Lerner to finish mind, so there's no doubt HDE did it on the cheap.
i am sure a compromise between retaining and bulldozing the whole lot could have been found.

Offline Ads

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Re: Villa Park Redevelopment
« Reply #146 on: March 08, 2021, 10:00:26 AM »
Seems senseless to me to compromise the foot print of your new build to save an aesthetic that you would have been able to replicate on probably a much grander scale.

The area around the McGregor statue now for example, where the actual entrance is would have allowed something similar. When you're inside to go up into the executive boxes, there's a double flight of stairs, so it would have been very similar, albeit bigger, to have built a stair case externally leading to the first floor.

Offline London Villan

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Re: Villa Park Redevelopment
« Reply #147 on: March 08, 2021, 10:19:36 AM »
The advantage that Rangers had is they had space at either end to create new access to the third tier, but they also lost the gable and press box from the roof, which was a big part of the character of the stand.

Knocking down the Trinity was one Ellis's worst decisions - it needed imagination and foresight to incorporate the stand into the future plan for the stadium - neither his strongest points.


What could have been done? I think there were two options.

1. Keep the external walls of the stand and have fewer seats but more corporate housed in a new stand - then replace the lost seats with the redevelopment of the north stand and witton lane. 15 year plan probably - and some short-term pain.

2. Replace the old stand with some as architecturally unique as Leitch's stand. Not easy, as you'd have a group saying make it look like the past and the other wanting an "interesting" modern design - I think some of the new ballparks in the States have done a good job of the former - Yankee Stadium for example, but "modern" architecture is marmite.

What we got was a decent pitch-facing experience - finished-off by Lerner for almost as much as the stand cost to build originally - but externally the stand is as poor design as anything that has been built in the city in the last 30 years. No focal point, no style, nothing unique. Even edgbaston's new stand, which was constructed on a very tight budget, at least has some of these attributes.

Here is a thought - if we are not moving site - the new north stand is built 5-10 further north, the new witton lane also shifts northwards and uses the space in front of the first row and incorporates an overhang from the second tier. The Holte and Trinity can then have a few extra rows added at the front. Job done - 55,000 - 60,000 seats ready for our Champions League nights.
« Last Edit: March 08, 2021, 10:21:15 AM by London Villan »

Offline Ads

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Re: Villa Park Redevelopment
« Reply #148 on: March 08, 2021, 10:28:47 AM »
The exterior is guilty of being generic and bland. Inside the stand it is good, pitch side it is good. Outside it could be anywhere.

That's why the Holte is for me the best stand in football. It looks brilliant outside. The brickwork, glass, mosaic, the stairs leading up. It's grandiose and a huge nod to the past. Inside its spacious and pitch side it is vast and imposing.

I would love them to put an external facade on the Trinity and think any new North stand ought to meet a similar 3 stage criteria.

Online algy

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Re: Villa Park Redevelopment
« Reply #149 on: March 08, 2021, 10:47:56 AM »
Seems senseless to me to compromise the foot print of your new build to save an aesthetic that you would have been able to replicate on probably a much grander scale.

The area around the McGregor statue now for example, where the actual entrance is would have allowed something similar. When you're inside to go up into the executive boxes, there's a double flight of stairs, so it would have been very similar, albeit bigger, to have built a stair case externally leading to the first floor.
Yeah, I agree with this completely.  I don't think it was at all necessary to keep the old Trinity Road stand in place - it'd changed, and been improved upon - since Archibald Leitch first constructed it.  But we could've recreated the aesthetic with the new stand, or improved on it - maybe taken in a few highlights from his other work.

 


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