Villa Park Redevelopment

[Villan82]

An extra 8-10k makes piss all difference to match receipts and merchandising. I’ll concede it makes some difference but in the grand scheme of the race to £400m turnover there’s easier ways to do it.

 I disagree, a big full ground makes us more attractive to sponsors and to the overseas Tv market.

After watching the euro's  in Germany on TV, and then going to Dortmund for pre season showed how much we have taken our eye off the ball stadium wise over the years. I remember going to Anfield in the early eighties and the capacity was 33,000...now it's 61,000, standing behind the goal at Old Trafford when Withe notched the winner, capacity then 58,000..now 76,000..new stadium on the way....while we have gone from 55,000 + crowds in the seventies to a capacity of 42,000 now.
I've always been in the redevelop Villa Park camp, but I fear there may be too many obstacles to overcome with the present site to achieve what many of us want..60,000 seats and a pint at half time. My lad summed it up as we were leaving the stadium in Dortmund..."they need to get cracking with our stadium, we're miles off it"

110% this. The North Stand, you could argue, is about 30 years past its sell by date considering the lower tier was left as it was because it was built in the era of standing on terraces. Bar ourselves and Chelsea the big clubs all play in 50,000 plus stadia. Everton will join them next season and Chelsea would if they could. We are the only club who think expanding capacity is a 'bad idea'.

What happens if PSR/FFP gets ditched and the rules get changed with more emphasis on clubs with bigger earning capacity on a a match day? The cancelled redevelopment has never sat well with me and has always had the look of a decision that will bite us on the arse at some point. We'd be 50,000  in two year's time if we'd only stuck with what we said we'd do.

We spend months here speculating that the cancellation must mean a new stadium is on the way but Heck has ruled that out in his 'lifetime'!! I fear we are stuck at 43,000 for the next decade.

I never thought I would ever think this growing up, but Villa Park is too small and continues to be overtaken yearly by other clubs capacity wise, when there only used to be 3 or 4 bigger stadiums.  I think its now a below averaged sized stadium in the Premier League with no sign of any change to take place.

Indeed, same here. Successive owners should hang their heads in shame. It used to be one of the best and biggest. We had a bigger capacity going into the 1993/94 season than we do now.

And How can expansion be unimportant if every other club seems to be in a race to get a bigger capacity? i wish Heck would stop the B.S. and start explaining our policy.

[Chip Butty 111]

The number of grounds that I visited in the eighties, which no longer exist because they had the foresight to go bigger and better is surprising.
Filbert St
Baseball Ground
Highfield Rd
The Dell
Roker Park
Maine Rd
Victoria Ground
Highbury
White Hart Lane
Upton Park
The Den
...I could go on
And the list of grounds that have vastly increased capacity, who traditionally we have competed with, is alarming.
And all the while we continue to make excuses not to increase capacity and fall further behind the rest..we need to get our act together and stop being obsessed with executive lounges and reconfiguring gangways.

[paul_e]

The number of grounds that I visited in the eighties, which no longer exist because they had the foresight to go bigger and better is surprising.
Filbert St
Baseball Ground
Highfield Rd
The Dell
Roker Park
Maine Rd
Victoria Ground
Highbury
White Hart Lane
Upton Park
The Den
...I could go on
And the list of grounds that have vastly increased capacity, who traditionally we have competed with, is alarming.
And all the while we continue to make excuses not to increase capacity and fall further behind the rest..we need to get our act together and stop being obsessed with executive lounges and reconfiguring gangways.

All moved to a new site though, which is a cardinal sin according to some which has leaked over to the owners so we're now limited to what we can do being working around the fringes of a plot that doesn't work for a 60k stadium with full modern facilities.

[Demitri_C]

Apologies if this is wrong thread but just wanted to give a quick review on today at the lower grounds.

First the negative- the foods shit.the chips were burnt and the burger was bland with just cheese grated and no onions or oprion to have cheese melted on the burger. Think for the price the food needs ti be alot better than that.

Barring that the idea was great. Had a wonderful time. Alot of seats, huge screens to watcb game and easy to get a drink. The staff were pleasant too.

Also had three legends there mcnally teale and shaw there.  Mcnallys a lovely fella so funny. Overall was a great day. I hope they will do this for more away games as its great for the fans. Lovely atmosphere

[Percy McCarthy]

^^ Sounds great, shame about the food. Got a works do there coming up. The venue is the only reason I might go.

[Dante Lavelli]

Good to hear.  Was it busy?

Seems a logical way to increase revenue.  I don’t work in hospitality but could help with staff retention/training and turning over stock to keep it fresh. I like it.

[Demitri_C]

Good to hear.  Was it busy?

Seems a logical way to increase revenue.  I don’t work in hospitality but could help with staff retention/training and turning over stock to keep it fresh. I like it.

Yeah it was very busy. Must have been a few thousand there

Its definitely worth ot for the club as they made a lot of money in drink and food i would imagine. A great idea for the club.

Wouldn't suprise me if they start doing this but there will be a fee involved. Its a good way of experiencing the lower grounds without paying the OTT fee

[Chip Butty 111]

The number of grounds that I visited in the eighties, which no longer exist because they had the foresight to go bigger and better is surprising.
Filbert St
Baseball Ground
Highfield Rd
The Dell
Roker Park
Maine Rd
Victoria Ground
Highbury
White Hart Lane
Upton Park
The Den
...I could go on
And the list of grounds that have vastly increased capacity, who traditionally we have competed with, is alarming.
And all the while we continue to make excuses not to increase capacity and fall further behind the rest..we need to get our act together and stop being obsessed with executive lounges and reconfiguring gangways.

All moved to a new site though, which is a cardinal sin according to some which has leaked over to the owners so we're now limited to what we can do being working around the fringes of a plot that doesn't work for a 60k stadium with full modern facilities.

My preference has always been to stay put and redevelop. But if it's not possible to achieve what we need to keep up, capacity wise at the current site, we need to move on. Times change and we should have made a decision years ago about Villa Park being future proof, but we've sat on our hands while other clubs have developed their grounds or made the difficult decision to move. The way we were told of the cancellation of the North Stand rebuild was beyond shambolic in 2024..make huge announcements about a new stand...then when no one's looking try and sweep it under the carpet. At the moment the club is really going places and 42,000 is not enough clearly, hopefully Mr Heck will tell us before the end of the season what we are doing...instead of what we're not doing

[Hookeysmith]

Just been down to get a shirt and must say the shop is 100's times better than what went before.

The one thing is the activity going on - i attend construction sites in my work and it is unbelievable to think that they will have V P ready for pre KO on Saturday with the amount of trades and materials all over the site.

Fair play if they pull it off

[Risso]

I'd settle for having a ticket to get in at this stage!

[Pat Mustard]

Just been down to get a shirt and must say the shop is 100's times better than what went before.

The one thing is the activity going on - i attend construction sites in my work and it is unbelievable to think that they will have V P ready for pre KO on Saturday with the amount of trades and materials all over the site.

Fair play if they pull it off

Same here, we just went down and couldn't believe how much work looks left to do.  The new fanzone area seems to be having a load of portakabin type construction going on, but didn't look like it had got very far.   Had to park at the Holte End as the North Stand car park was no-go, and walking back up Witton Lane it looks like there is still a wall missing at the end of the Witton Lane stand above the away fans entrance.  Presume this is linked to the work on the exec boxes in there, but not sure if/how this affects the away end.

On the plus side the shop was looking good and really busy, so the club must be raking it in on shirt sales this year.

[Chris Smith]

Just been down to get a shirt and must say the shop is 100's times better than what went before.

The one thing is the activity going on - i attend construction sites in my work and it is unbelievable to think that they will have V P ready for pre KO on Saturday with the amount of trades and materials all over the site.

Fair play if they pull it off

Same here, we just went down and couldn't believe how much work looks left to do.  The new fanzone area seems to be having a load of portakabin type construction going on, but didn't look like it had got very far.   Had to park at the Holte End as the North Stand car park was no-go, and walking back up Witton Lane it looks like there is still a wall missing at the end of the Witton Lane stand above the away fans entrance.  Presume this is linked to the work on the exec boxes in there, but not sure if/how this affects the away end.

On the plus side the shop was looking good and really busy, so the club must be raking it in on shirt sales this year.

They’ll be insisting on PPE to enter the stands.

[London Villan]

A few years ago, we did a lot of work at Villa Park and our fitters were still installing stuff during the morning of the first game.

[cdbearsfan]

I'd settle for having a ticket to get in at this stage!

You want the Moon on a stick.

[Dogtanian]

I'd settle for having a ticket to get in at this stage!

You want the Moon on a stick.

MOON ON A STICK! MOON ON A STICK!