Should I stay or should I go?

[Duncan Shaw]

A lot of the infrastructure challenges are outside of the club's control but what is in their control is catering. Why not turn the North Stand car park in to a post match Digbeth Diner type thing with bars and takeaway food to try to keep a few thousand from leaving straight away. That should then spread out the problem of shifting 10s of thousands of people which every large club has.

Because it's full of cars?

So shift the cars. You said yourself that modern grounds have very little parking capacity. Just because our ground has been there over 100 years doesn't mean we should keep a car park at either end.

First, I didn't say it and the key phrase here is 'new grounds'. At the moment some supporters pay a lot of money for those parking spaces. They're also used by club staff. Then there's the safety implications of having food stands in an area that's used as an exit. If it was practical do you not think it would have been tried before?

Not necessarily.  Using a car park as a car park is the easy answer.  Just because something's never been done before doesn't mean it's impossible or that it's already been thoroughly thought through.

So some supporters pay a lot of money to park there.  Well supporters paid a lot of money to sit in the Trinity when we got relegated but it didn't stop the club kicking them out of their seats.   And it would be easy enough for staff to park offsite and be bussed to the ground.

We all know VP isn't ideal so if we're going to stay we need to be creative about how we use it.

(PS Apologies - I thought you had said about the parking at other grounds - must've been someone else)

i think there's merit in this, but what about the night games that kick off at 8, or some even at 8:15pm.  People aren't going to want to hang about after them and you will probably get some noise related restrictions that late anyway.

[Duncan Shaw]

Also, thinking about car parking, wasn't part of the planning application for the new academy the other side of Witton Station stating that it would be used for staff match day parking?

[LeeB]

Went on a stadium tour at the weekend and the fella doing it said NSWE had plans in place to upgrade VP in 2 phases.  First one is to rebuild the North taking us up to 54k.  Second phase is to take us to 60k if there's demand, regular European football etc.

Based on that I doubt we'll be leaving B6 any time soon.  Would hate us to move out of town personally, even though getting away afterwards is a nightmare it's worth putting up with.

54k is pretty ambitious from just redeveloping the North Stand - I'm guessing that the only way we'd do this is by filling in the corners and ending up with a horseshoe layout.  I think anything beyond that will involve much longer planning, buying up of properties and bigger masterplan for the whole area.

I still don't think it's beyond the realms of possibility that we could redevelop the North Stand and still end up having to leave Villa Park in the future, or once the land is available that VP ends up being completely rebuilt a la Spurs.  The Alexander Stadium will have scope for temporary stands meaning it might be a viable option if we had to move out for a season, but really can't see that happening for at least 10 years or so.  The question will be how quickly we want/need to get to a capacity much beyond 52-54k.

54k just by redeveloping the Witton End sounds impossible to me, unless it going to be all standing. It currently has 7k seats so would need to go up to 19k to make 54. The Holte currently has 13.5k and Trinity Rd 13k.
I wouldn’t fancy a seat in the back row trying to look through the clouds!

You could act out scenes from Monkey though, and do that thing where he blows on his two fingers.

[Des Little]

Only on here can a thread about ground redevelopment and local travel infrastructure move onto the topic of Monkey.  That's why I love it

[DennisHodgetts]

Pigsy..... deffo a bluenose!

[The Edge]

Went on a stadium tour at the weekend and the fella doing it said NSWE had plans in place to upgrade VP in 2 phases.  First one is to rebuild the North taking us up to 54k.  Second phase is to take us to 60k if there's demand, regular European football etc.

Based on that I doubt we'll be leaving B6 any time soon.  Would hate us to move out of town personally, even though getting away afterwards is a nightmare it's worth putting up with.

You could have saved us a lot of time debating whether or not we should vacate B6 if you dropped that little nugget in a bit sooner! But seriously that's really interesting news. To raise the capacity to 54k in one go would mean 19,000 seats at that end of the ground which would suggest they plan to wrap the stand round from the Trinity at the height it currently is. It might even need to go a bit higher to achieve those stats.

[The Edge]

If they just built a Holte copy at the North stand end it would easily achieve 15,000 because it wouldn't need to have a whole corner sliced off on the Trinity Rd side. Fill in the corner between the two and it's easy to see how they can get the 19,000 seats at that end of the ground.

[Ad@m]

I'm not sure how I feel about filling the corners in at VP...

[Rudy Can't Fail]

Can we just have safe standing around all the bottom tiers and in the Holte?

[Woofles The Wonder Dog]

A super read. Cheers Dave.

And I’m a remainer.

[The Edge]

I'm not sure how I feel about filling the corners in at VP...

I think we all love the 4 separate stands design of Villa Park but the reality is there's no way of achieving the capacity needed without filling in the corners. I think we will eventually end up with a horseshoe shaped stadium with a freestanding Holte End. However I think none of of it will happen until the problems around transport infrastructure are sorted out.

[Lastfootstamper]

I can't see much happening re transport. How much political will is there to solve something that's a bit of a pain for a relatively small amount of people on one afternoon or evening every 19 days on average?

[Villan82]

Copy the Holte at the Witton End as has been suggested on here a few times. You probably could get 14-15k with that design at that end.That gets you up to around 48-50k. I think that would do for the moment.

[exigo]

There were two versions of the plans knocking around from Lerner's days. I can only find this one at over 51k, but I'm sure the other option had a bigger corner increasing capacity a bit further.

[eamonn]

Talking league positions and trophies, not pounds in the bank, I wonder if Arsenal would have been any worse off if they’d stayed at Highbury, a classy old ground that still sends a tingle up the spine even now when I’ve walked past it going to their smart, comfortable but soulless new place.

And a ground 25 years old that's already looking tatty in parts.

Even worse, they’ve only been there since 2006!

They've been at the Emirates for nearly 20 years?!     I still think of that place as a new ground!

15.5 years. Sir Olof of Mellberg the first player to score a goal there in a competitive game.