Villa Park Redevelopment

[Risso]

Why should they have to live with it? It's people's lives you're talking about here.

Agree completely.

There has to be a better option than turfing people out of their homes.  Aston exists for 365 days a year, not just the 20 or so times a year that 40,000 football supporters turn up.

My thought too.

How can it be morally right to put a CPO in place for an event that happens every other week and never in the summer. We are talking about someone's family home here.

It happens all over the place for lots of reasons. I guess the club could argue that they're providing facilities and jobs that will benefit the local area. Perhaps the people living there would be happy to take more money than their house is worth and move somewhere nicer?

[London Villan]

I can't imagine there are many private enterprises that have CPO'd the best part of 150 houses... in terms of cost alone that would be £40m before the stand has been touched.

[Fasth56]

I'm pretty pissed off that I may lose my seat of 20+ years in the Holte with the introduction of safe standing. So I can't imagine how people would feel when someone rocks up with a CPO to take their home.

[The Man With A Stick]

When Liverpool did it, was that under Purslow's watch or was it before his time there?

[Brend'Watkins]

According to wikki Purslow joined in 2009.  When the CPO was initiated I don't know.

[Risso]

I can't imagine there are many private enterprises that have CPO'd the best part of 150 houses... in terms of cost alone that would be £40m before the stand has been touched.

It wouldn't need to be anything like that number. The stand only goes halfway down the road, and you could conceivably leave the ones opposite the side of the Holte End alone. The ones on the other side of the Holte Road could also possibly remain, which means you'd be looking at about 20 houses.

[Drummond]

It's so easy to say lets buy a few houses and give people a few more quid for them, but when it's your home, where you may have grown up, or had a family, or lived with someone who has passed away, then it's different. There may be a lot of people who'd take 10% over avg price, some 20% but many wouldn't want to move at all.

There's no point unless everyone wants to move. Ultimately, we're a football club, and whilst we may have been a bedrock of the local community when we were first formed, these days I suspect many of the local residents see it as an inconvenience for up to 25 (haha, yeah right, 19 plus maybe one cup game) times a year. Should we get Champions League football, the disruption grows, the willingness to move may grow too, as then we're into potentially 40 games a year which is a lot of disruption.

It's a really tricky situation to be in.

[Drummond]

I'd also add that it isn't just the houses you buy to knock down, but the next row/street too, who, instead of having another house and garden as neighbours, all of s sudden have a football ground and supporters next to them all the time.

[VILLA MOLE]

Maybe lets ask them first 

[Pat Mustard]

It's all a bit of a moot point at the moment though isn't it?  If and when the club ever did get around to CPOing a load of houses then I'd suspect it's not just a question of redeveloping the Witton Lane stand - all of a sudden it would be part of a much bigger parcel of land, and a complete rebuild in a different orientation (like Spurs) potentially becomes an option.  I don't suspect anything like that would happen for another 20-25 years, around about the time that the Trinity Road and Holte End stands need replacing anyway.  Once the North Stand is done I think by and large we are stuck with what we have for a while to come.

[dicedlam]

Why should they have to live with it? It's people's lives you're talking about here.

Agree completely.

There has to be a better option than turfing people out of their homes.  Aston exists for 365 days a year, not just the 20 or so times a year that 40,000 football supporters turn up.

My thought too.

How can it be morally right to put a CPO in place for an event that happens every other week and never in the summer. We are talking about someone's family home here.

It happens all over the place for lots of reasons. I guess the club could argue that they're providing facilities and jobs that will benefit the local area. Perhaps the people living there would be happy to take more money than their house is worth and move somewhere nicer?

For critical government infrastructure I can understand, but not for private enterprise.

As Drummond said, there is more to it than someone coming along and offering you 10% over the market value for your property. There are lot of families in the Asian community that rely on each other, none more so than for safety reasons.
I could well imagine the kind reception they would receive in some areas of Brum that, let's just say, aren't so welcoming.

[Risso]

For critical government infrastructure I can understand, but not for private enterprise.

As Drummond said, there is more to it than someone coming along and offering you 10% over the market value for your property. There are lot of families in the Asian community that rely on each other, none more so than for safety reasons.
I could well imagine the kind reception they would receive in some areas of Brum that, let's just say, aren't so welcoming.

CPOs were in place for developments including Brentford, Arsenal, Liverpool, Spurs and Chelsea. Blackpool are considering if they'll need to use one for nearly 30 houses if a negotiated deal can't be finalised.

[pauliewalnuts]

I wonder if it would be cheaper to pay for the road to be lowered so that a new stand could be built over it?

That reminded me for some reason of "Raise the Titanic? It would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic".

[paul_e]

To go back a bit, because this thread has got away from the original point which was whether there were better ways to go about things to allow stadium expansion than what Liverpool did. No one thinks a CPO is perfect or that there won't be some residents would be unhappy but it's clearly a better way of doing things and is the ONLY thing the club should be looking at if the decision is that we need that space to expand the ground.

[Des Little]

All this is well and good, but we aren't going to fill a 50K stadium when the current vehicle for communicating spare seats (like Saturday) was pretty much word of mouth, and even then via telephone sales only.  I do hope we'll be ready when the time comes.