Interesting bit of feedback I’ve received this week from a mate of a mate who’s involved in stadium planning and construction.

I know it’s a few month late but he’s had a look at the 88m plans. Now this is only speculative because he doesn’t have all the info so it’s an educated guess work. He made three points that for me show it up for the sham it always was. Can’t prove it but hey. The third one is especially interesting and I don’t think any of us spotted it.

1: Access would struggle big style to get past Health and Safety - as we nearly all thought.

2: Inadequate car parking is an issue, especially to the Highways people. They won’t like the extra bars and lounges as those sort of punter tend not to walk to games.

....and the one that really got me.

The guy reckons that on that plans footprint with all the latest guidelines for barriers, fire escapes, entrances, seat tread depth etc that ground on those plans he estimates could hold no more than 6,000 spectators.

This makes it totally useless as a SL venue and no use to us at all - but then it was never meant to be was it.

A good post Vasty; I initially thought along those lines when they published the plan, but chose to believe that maybe things could work out as they said, rose tinted glasses and all that.

Vasty

I was also extremely sceptical when I saw the plans, and I will add a 4th which your mate could try and help with.

Disability access !
If you read up on that, there must me a minimum number of disability parking spaces per 1000 spectators .
There are also maximum distances between ground entrance and these spaces which I believe is around 50 meteres.
You can get around this by having parking elsewhere and then shuttle service with pull in lay bys etc, all further complicated stuff if you read up on it.

Further to that, if this is classed as a new stadium then normal parking must also be provided in a certain ratio per 1000 spectators . I think its around 50 minimum so a 6000 stadium would require a further300 spaces. (These figures are not accurate but only from memory but a good stadium anorak could find them)

The only possible way around it from what I can see, is classing this as an upgrade to an existing stadium and not a new development.

But I am with you, its all a con , even it if it does happen it will be nothing more than a cheap facelift and way below normal modern stadia standards

THere lookes a hell of a lot crammed into a small space.
However, wasnt it just an artists impression, rather than a detailed plan or, did I miss something ?

Artists impressions I think, but like you say for space, especially on the Superbowl site they crammed a lot in and in turn boxed the ground in even more, making it look a bit cartoony.

When the images were released I just hoped that for once things were above board and any doubts I had, that had been brought up on here were down to our years of getting nowhere. Also, the fact MC seemed quite positive about it probably swayed quite a few people

He was ambushed. At that moment what else could he say. Can you imagine the flak he and the club would have received. I suspect he needed to look positive at first or appear the ultimate party pooper.

I think the disabled stuff was all a part of the 'access' issues. To him I suspect it's not a separate issue. But yes you are dead right.

Won't matter if it's a cheap facelift or the real thing the fact that an 'expert' believes it will only hold 6,000 people makes it useless - deliberately useless imho.

Sadly I too was very sceptical like a lot of others. I said at the time it seemed too obvious a solution, if it was that viable, why hadn't it been done before? Land is probably a more precious commodity than money where stadia is concerned, so re-developing Belle Vue was a no brainer where that is concerned, all very depressing and predictable sadly. I've said it before, and i'll say it again, we are now in 2017 and we shouldn't be in this position, previous chairmen and council leaders etc, etc, should be hanging their heads in shame......

He probably was but I bet like some of us there was a glint of hope at the time of finally getting something sorted.

This is probably the most relevant and intelligent post written on this subject in the past few months.... having been involved in construction.. green and brown belt for the past ten years in Aus... everything about the Belle Vue redevelopment stank! Parking.. traffic and people flows... adjacent to housing... even the consideration of commercial issues seemed lacking..

It would be lovely to commission an independent report! Wonder what that would cost in the UK ? I believe it would show the councils proposals to be the sham and diversity tactics that they are!

I thought it looked different than the usual flat pack stadium design you often see. If looked a well designed compact stadium that's why I hoped it would happen.

Up the Trin

Is that right regarding parking I thought is was going the other way nowadays and planning limiting parking to encourage use of public transport, it may be different for inner City stadium rather than out of town stadiums. Think this would be classed as upgrade of existing stadium so would apply, look at the size of spurs new ground with virtually no parking.

Up the Trin

You're not totally wrong there tbh. However limited parking is one thing - no parking is a different matter. According to those plans we will have less parking than we have now. In fact according to those plans I can't see parking for ONE car!

So yes limited parking is acceptable but as PB states there are minimum standards. Most notably where the disabled are concerned I believe it's one space per hundred spectators. That would require 100 spaces for a 10 k stadium. I can't see anything like that on those plans. I don't think the new build argument gets you out of that one.

It's just wrong the whole thing is wrong.

Apologies if its been mentioned before but I just wondered if one of the tall buildings on the plans may be a multi storey car park.
I appreciate even if it was it wouldn't address all the other problems.