St James' Park

[Nucasol]

Just now, r0cafella said:

I know your gesting but given the season we’ve had the additional expense of European games you can forgive our fans for not being in a hurry to get to Glasgow for a meaningless game. 

Exactly. Saving the coin for three overseas trips. Iberia over Ibrox all the way.

[Big River]

1 minute ago, r0cafella said:

I know your gesting but given the season we’ve had the additional expense of European games you can forgive our fans for not being in a hurry to get to Glasgow for a meaningless game. 

 

on a Tuesday night, no less

[SteV]

2 minutes ago, Big River said:

 

on a Tuesday night, no less

And we’ll still sell the full 8k eventually 

[LFEE]

1 minute ago, r0cafella said:

I know your gesting but given the season we’ve had the additional expense of European games you can forgive our fans for not being in a hurry to get to Glasgow for a meaningless game. 

I am ?… but I’m making a veiled point at those whinging about not having enough loyalty points turning up the opportunity to build them up. Under the previous owners the 10-12 years away travels were fairly meaningless games also Championship and one EPL season aside. Those people didn’t pick and choose same as you can’t pick and choose your right to attend a final.

[TwoForJoy]

34 minutes ago, Toonjam88 said:

Probably had a chance right at that moment and they hadn’t really looked at the cost of extending. It’s all about corporate and boxes to be honest that’s how they make the money at the club it’s no longer your average supporter. And I can’t see how you get more corporate boxes etc in the current SJP

There used to be boxes in the East Stand, so there must be some infrastructure still there.

 

https://www.nufc.co.uk/media/24290/st-james-park-takes-shape-by-the-late-80s.jpg

[David Edgar]

19 hours ago, NE27 said:

 

 

[jack j]

17 minutes ago, LFEE said:

Still 3K+ Rangers tickets available at 5 loyalty points so maybe we should build a new ground back to the original 36k ?

Hopefully it costing 20 quid will put those off who would just buy one for the loyalty point. Cos am sure there's plenty non season ticket holders will be going up

[Jaqen]

 

There's a bloke on YouTube who goes around all the grounds reviewing the 'padded seat' areas of clubs. 

 

For the price ours doesn't look great, like. Food looks like something you'd get at a school canteen 

[Keegans Export]

1 hour ago, SteV said:

Tbf, you’d assume with any expansion we wouldn’t be a kick in the arse off 65k. 
 

If we get SJP to ~60k, any new stadium would have to be a fair bit bigger than 65k to justify everything that involves.

It's not quite that simple I don't think - for a start you'd have to compare the costs of expansion vs new stadium. Didn't it end up costing almost as much to expand to L7 as the proposed Castle Leazes stadium would have been to build?

 

There's also the point @Toonjam88 makes that it's all about the hospitality. An extra 5k seats at £650/season isn't going to justify the expense of a new stadium but a whole ring of corporate tickets at £7k/season might do!

[r0cafella]

6 minutes ago, Jaqen said:

 

There's a bloke on YouTube who goes around all the grounds reviewing the 'padded seat' areas of clubs. 

 

For the price ours doesn't look great, like. Food looks like something you'd get at a school canteen 

Served up by outsourcing company Sodexo if I’m not wrong. 

[SteV]

4 minutes ago, Keegans Export said:

It's not quite that simple I don't think - for a start you'd have to compare the costs of expansion vs new stadium. Didn't it end up costing almost as much to expand to L7 as the proposed Castle Leazes stadium would have been to build?

 

There's also the point @Toonjam88 makes that it's all about the hospitality. An extra 5k seats at £650/season isn't going to justify the expense of a new stadium but a whole ring of corporate tickets at £7k/season might do!

Of course, but ultimately it’s a far easier (for want of a better word) sell in terms of what would undoubtedly be a controversial move, if you can say, ‘it will allow loads more fans to attend matches’, than saying ‘we’ll make more money’.

[Kid Icarus]

It probably goes without saying at this point, but I'd be sick to my stomach if we moved from SJP. 

[HaydnNUFC]

10 minutes ago, Keegans Export said:

It's not quite that simple I don't think - for a start you'd have to compare the costs of expansion vs new stadium. Didn't it end up costing almost as much to expand to L7 as the proposed Castle Leazes stadium would have been to build?

 

There's also the point @Toonjam88 makes that it's all about the hospitality. An extra 5k seats at £650/season isn't going to justify the expense of a new stadium but a whole ring of corporate tickets at £7k/season might do!

 

According this article I found on .com they took out a £42m loan for it in 1997 and turfed out bond holders in the Milburn for new corporate areas. Spurs' new ground cost £1bn. You'd think a new ground up here would be cheaper as opposed to in London, but expansion would almost certainly be cheaper you'd think.

 

FWIW, Anfield's extension at the Anfield Road End for an extra 7,000 seats is costing them ~£60m.

 

 

Edited June 7, 2023 by HaydnNUFC

[Wilson]

1 hour ago, r0cafella said:

Also let’s not forget (this isn’t in anyway to discredit @Toonjam88either) the owners did state pretty categorically we wouldn’t be moving anywhere. 

 

For whatever reason people seem to just keep ignoring this, I'm aware things can change and Ghodoussi doesn't have anywhere near the final say, but it was a pretty bold statement to come out with if he wasn't certain it was the case. 

[KetsbaiaIsBald]

1 hour ago, SteV said:

Tbf, you’d assume with any expansion we wouldn’t be a kick in the arse off 65k. 
 

If we get SJP to ~60k, any new stadium would have to be a fair bit bigger than 65k to justify everything that involves.

 

11 minutes ago, Keegans Export said:

It's not quite that simple I don't think - for a start you'd have to compare the costs of expansion vs new stadium. Didn't it end up costing almost as much to expand to L7 as the proposed Castle Leazes stadium would have been to build?

 

There's also the point @Toonjam88 makes that it's all about the hospitality. An extra 5k seats at £650/season isn't going to justify the expense of a new stadium but a whole ring of corporate tickets at £7k/season might do!

 

Another point is hopefully is would be is it an initial 65K.  At SJP is sounds like it would be very difficult to get to 60K so further expansion would be near impossible.  Hopefully if we did move to a 65K stadium it would be designed such that expansion could be iterative.

 

(Note - I personally don't see us moving, although would love moving if the location was the park)

[Keegans Export]

5 minutes ago, HaydnNUFC said:

 

According this article I found on .com they took out a £42m loan for it in 1997 and turfed out bond holders in the Milburn for new corporate areas. Spurs' new ground cost £1bn. You'd think a new ground up here would be cheaper as opposed to in London, but expansion would almost certainly be cheaper you'd think.

It looks like Man City's ground cost about £125m (although there has been a lot of redevelopment of it since then), not a million miles away from £42m in 1997 taking inflation into account

[TheBrownBottle]

9 minutes ago, HaydnNUFC said:

 

According this article I found on .com they took out a £42m loan for it in 1997 and turfed out bond holders in the Milburn for new corporate areas. Spurs' new ground cost £1bn. You'd think a new ground up here would be cheaper as opposed to in London, but expansion would almost certainly be cheaper you'd think.

 

FWIW, Anfield's extension at the Anfield Road End for an extra 7,000 seats is costing them ~£60m.

 

 

 

Expansion to SJP likely wouldn’t be cheaper than a brand new ground - depending on how big and how it’s built, of course.  Extending the Gallowgate - if it’s even possible - would be a massive civil engineering exercise and would be hugely expensive.

[SteV]

5 minutes ago, KetsbaiaIsBald said:

 

 

Another point is hopefully is would be is it an initial 65K.  At SJP is sounds like it would be very difficult to get to 60K so further expansion would be near impossible.  Hopefully if we did move to a 65K stadium it would be designed such that expansion could be iterative.

 

(Note - I personally don't see us moving, although would love moving if the location was the park)

That’s a fair point. I’m not convinced we have a need for anything over 70k in the long term, given the population size of the area, but that’s something that can be argued either way.

[HaydnNUFC]

9 minutes ago, TheBrownBottle said:

Expansion to SJP likely wouldn’t be cheaper than a brand new ground - depending on how big and how it’s built, of course.  Extending the Gallowgate - if it’s even possible - would be a massive civil engineering exercise and would be hugely expensive.

 

I find it hard to believe that expanding the Gallowgate would come to close to costing anything near what a new 65,000 capacity ground would cost. Spurs' ground has cost £1 billion, Everton's is ~£500m, the Emirates cost £390m almost 20 years ago. 

 

 

Edited June 7, 2023 by HaydnNUFC

[duo]

19 hours ago, HaydnNUFC said:

 

They've frozen the prices again I think? Those on that original 10 year deal have had that extended again so I imagine prices won't go up.

 

Also given they only issued 1000 STs in the summer, they probably won't issue new STs until they extend the ground imo. I hope they don't anyway given there's no way I can afford one right now.

Is that true? I was on the 9 year freeze which expired last season. My season ticket went up season just gone by a couple of hundred.

[HaydnNUFC]

1 minute ago, duo said:

Is that true? I was on the 9 year freeze which expired last season. My season ticket went up season just gone by a couple of hundred.

 

My dad's had his extended so just going off that.

[TheBrownBottle]

17 minutes ago, HaydnNUFC said:

 

I find it hard to believe that expanding the Gallowgate would come to close to costing anything that a new 65,000 capacity ground would cost. Spurs' ground has cost £1 billion, Everton's is ~£500m, the Emirates cost £390m almost 20 years ago. 

I’m a civils estimator by day - it’s one of the few things in life where I’m reasonably certain on such things.  I don’t find it hard to believe, tbh.  You can’t benchmark any stadium built in London against what it would cost in the NE.  Everton’s proposed design is OTT in terms of expense.  Arsenal’s ground cost c.£400m in 2004; but Leicester’s cost less than 10% of that around the same time, and Man City‘s a quarter of that.  

 

There have been three significant stadiums built in the NE in the last quarter century or so - the SOS, Riverside and George Reynolds Pink Elephant.  Construction cost indices become fairly imprecise going back more than 5-6 years, but there is no chance in hell that construction cost have went up ten fold in 20 years.  Allowing for the right site as low cost of land purchase, then you’d not be looking at anything like the costs you’ve cited.

 

edit: as a quick explanation, latent conditions are the biggest risk generally on civils projects.  The site at Gallowgate is fraught with latent conditions risks - you’re building over a road and a Metro station, on a sloping site where geotechnical investigations are likely next to impossible.  The potential damage to the trains or services underneath is huge.  The engineering solutions to actually build on there - even without those conditions - are nightmarish.  

 

 

Edited June 7, 2023 by TheBrownBottle

[TheBrownBottle]

A further note on this though; it has to be caveated against what the owners are likely to build.  An ordinary stadium on a reasonably priced greenfield site would be one thing; if they went super shiny deluxe, then of course the cost would skyrocket.  The last football stadium in the UK I was involved with estimating on was Leicester’s when they came up in 2016 - they did some extensive refurbs.  That was pricey …

[Keegans Export]

15 minutes ago, HaydnNUFC said:

 

I find it hard to believe that expanding the Gallowgate would come to close to costing anything near what a new 65,000 capacity ground would cost. Spurs' ground has cost £1 billion, Everton's is ~£500m, the Emirates cost £390m almost 20 years ago. 

 

 

 

I'm not sure Everton's new stadium is a fair comparison seeing as they're building it on a reclaimed dock - presumably much more complicated and expensive than building on solid, city-centre ground?

[HaydnNUFC]

6 minutes ago, Keegans Export said:

I'm not sure Everton's new stadium is a fair comparison seeing as they're building it on a reclaimed dock - presumably much more complicated and expensive than building on solid, city-centre ground?

 

People are wanting a new ground built in what is currently a green space in Leazes Park. Obviously wouldn't be as pricey as reclaiming a dock but work would still have to be done there.

 

14 minutes ago, TheBrownBottle said:

I’m a civils estimator by day - it’s one of the few things in life where I’m reasonably certain on such things.  I don’t find it hard to believe, tbh.  You can’t benchmark any stadium built in London against what it would cost in the NE.  Everton’s proposed design is OTT in terms of expense.  Arsenal’s ground cost c.£400m in 2004; but Leicester’s cost less than 10% of that around the same time, and Man City‘s a quarter of that.  

 

There have been three significant stadiums built in the NE in the last quarter century or so - the SOS, Riverside and George Reynolds Pink Elephant.  Construction cost indices become fairly imprecise going back more than 5-6 years, but there is no chance in hell that construction cost have went up ten fold in 20 years.  Allowing for the right site as low cost of land purchase, then you’d not be looking at anything like the costs you’ve cited.

 

edit: as a quick explanation, latent conditions are the biggest risk generally on civils projects.  The site at Gallowgate is fraught with latent conditions risks - you’re building over a road and a Metro station, on a sloping site where geotechnical investigations are likely next to impossible.  The potential damage to the trains or services underneath is huge.  The engineering solutions to actually build on there - even without those conditions - are nightmarish.  

 

 

 

 

Fairs, you clearly know what you're talking about.  

 

Just don't want to see us move from SJP. St James metro station is anyway pretty grubby and I imagine hardly ever used. People tend to get off on matchday at Monument, Haymarket and Central I believe? For a drink/scran in town before heading up. Only issue is it's the yellow line's terminus so if St James station was to close you'd have to make changes to Monument station which is extra cost. And I imagine there's no way the station could incorporated into the expansion to some degree?