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Our New Stadium

junio_oscarSY

By junio_oscarSY
in General Chelsea FC

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Eton Blue at the Chelsea Megastore

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Zola

Zola

Posted
Posted

The Samsung Arena. Well if they're going to put in a substantial amount into the project then they would have every right to expect their name in lights so to speak. People might not like the idea right now but if Arsenal fans can get used to The Emirates I'm sure we could get used to whatever ours would be called. The bottom line is it wouldn't be Stamford Bridge so it wouldn't be as if we were renaming our current home.

That is the key point right there!

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ForeverCarefree

ForeverCarefree

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Posted

The club released some info about redevelopment of Stamford Bridge last year, here's some info that seems relevant to the discussion:

 

Can the club provide proof that possible expansion of capacity at Stamford Bridge has been properly investigated?

 

The club has reports and studies from as early as 2003/04 on various aspects of a redevelopment of the stadium and has spent a considerable amount of time and money in looking at various aspects of a redevelopment. The bottom line is a redevelopment adding a significant number of seats needs a site of 16 to 18 acres or more, and at Stamford Bridge there are less than 12 acres.
 
The club has worked with several architects firms looking for ways to redevelop each of the four stands at Stamford Bridge to increase capacity.
 
If the East Stand, which was built in the early 1970s, were to be knocked down and redeveloped then there are two significant obstacles. A new stand would have to cantilever over the railway track. Standards regarding safety have changed since the early 1970s. The angle of the current stand is very steep but if it were rebuilt then the angle would have to be shallower to meet today's standards, with many seats significantly further from the pitch than they are now.
 
The Shed End stand at the south of the stadium cannot be expanded because of the hotel and the flats behind it. Rights to light and shadowing issues also preclude such a development.
 
For the Matthew Harding Stand at the north of the stadium, health and safety rules requires that in an emergency the whole site is cleared in eight minutes and we are restricted with Fulham Road being our only exit. Any additional people at the north end would have to go the furthest to reach the Fulham Road exits, so it is very unlikely planning permission would be granted, as we are virtually at our capacity limit for emergency egress. Rights of light and overshadowing issues for Brompton Park residents also cause planning difficulties.
 
Over the years it has been suggested a walkway should be built along the railway lines from the north end of the stadium towards West Brompton. That has been looked into, and was rejected at a public inquiry as the long narrow route is considered unsafe in the event of an emergency. We have not applied for planning permission for a walkway to Fulham Broadway station as the council has already said they would reject it for safety reasons.
 
The West Stand is of a height that is already the maximum allowed by planning regulations, in terms of rights of light overlooking the Stoll Foundation housing.
 
The club has looked at tearing down all four stands and at turning the direction of the pitch by 90 degrees but neither plan makes sense because again it should be emphasised that the site is less than12 acres and it is generally considered that to build a stadium from scratch with a capacity of 55,000 then approaching 20 acres is needed. A major reconstruction at Stamford Bridge also raises issues as to where the club would play during the two or three seasons that Stamford Bridge would not be available.

 

 

 

There was another article on the Club Website which went into a lot of detail about the implications of developing Stamford Bridge which I can not find right now but will post up if I find it. 

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Zola

Zola

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If the club were to extend the bridge surely it would take longer than a summer to complete.. meaning less fans attending for a while until its complete / playint our footy elsewhere until its ready?

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Fast Eddie

Fast Eddie

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The current site issues are a massive shame 

If the club were to extend the bridge surely it would take longer than a summer to complete.. meaning less fans attending for a while until its complete / playint our footy elsewhere until its ready?

Yes, it says 2 -3 seasons, bottom paragraph of the above.

Personally I think the only viable space left is Battersea..

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Jonty

Jonty

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To be honest, Bayern are a good example of something we could emulate. The Allianz Arena has a capacity of 71,000, and most tickets are around 10 euros from what I've heard. In theory we could surely do something similar, as it means the stadium gets filled, there's still a large amount of money coming in, the new generations of fans can actually afford to go to games and fans like the ones Carlashton Blue was mentioning can also still afford it. Of course it all sounds simple to us, but it could be and probably is more complicated than that.

Isn't new football infrastructure in Germany subsidized nearly entirely by the government?

Bayern haven't done sh*t.

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KrazyTea

KrazyTea

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While larger stadiums are no guarantee of success as Newcastle can attest to and West Ham will soon find out, if a successful club can combine that success with the larger revenues possible from bigger stadiums this integral to long-term growth. If anything this Lillie Bridge situation can attest to the administrations desire to build and expand leading to a future legacy for this club which is so important in my opinion.

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TheWestwayWonder

TheWestwayWonder

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I'd love us to have this in any new ground/stands build, never happen though sadly.

 

You never know.

Its possible by the time that any move/redevelopment goes through (at least 10 years from now) the championship will get a safe standing trial, and it could be a roaring success. City have backed a proposal already, so more clubs are coming around.

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Zola

Zola

Posted
Posted (edited)

http://www.insideworldfootball.com/premier-league/12693-chelsea-s-new-stadium-could-be-back-on-with-new-build-site-available?

Chelsea's new stadium could be back on with new build site available

Published on Tuesday, 11 June 2013 13:46

By Mark Baber

June 11 - The saga over Chelsea's search for a new stadium has taken a new turn, as Jose Mourinho returns, with the revelation that the club may be invited to bid on a 17-acre plot of land, owned by Transport for London (TfL) near Earls Court and just a mile north of current home Stamford Bridge.

The available land, known as the Lillie Bridge Depot, is currently being used as a railway depot and was expected to become part of the Earl's Court Masterplan redevelopment. However, TfL has said that the sale of this plot of land will be on the open market, opening up the prospect of a bidding war between Roman Abramovich, the Chelsea owner, and Capco, the Masterplan developer.

Stamford Bridge has a capacity of 41,000 which is 20,000 lower than the Emirates and West Ham's new stadium, and smaller than Tottenham's new stadium. A new 55,000 capacity stadium would enable Chelsea to raise its matchday revenues, but Stamford Bridge is considered impossible to redevelop due to being bordered by residential housing and a railway line, although it is in an area of extremely high property values.

Previous opportunities to buy a new site have foundered due to a number of factors, including being outbid by developers (in Nine Elms) and also due to the opposition of Hammersmith and Fulham Council which would be required to grant planning permission for a new stadium and who earlier this year said Chelsea had 'no place' in Earl's Court.

Before moving from the ground they have occupied since being founded, the club also need to get the agreement of the Chelsea Pitch Owners, the fan's group which owns the club's name and the freehold to Stamford Bridge and which was set up to prevent the ground being sold off to developers.

Contact the writer of this story at mark.baber@insideworldfootball.com

Edited by Zola
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Carshalton Blue

Carshalton Blue

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You never know.

Its possible by the time that any move/redevelopment goes through (at least 10 years from now) the championship will get a safe standing trial, and it could be a roaring success. City have backed a proposal already, so more clubs are coming around.

Just read this mate, it makes quite interesting reading regards terracing/seats ect its from another forum, footballgroundguide.

 

I thought I was the only one baffled by some of the lack of education on this subject by some on this thread - especially on a forum for people supposedly interested in football grounds, (the culture of and the design of)!

 

My club Portsmouth has just added its signature to the Safe Standing Campaign (25th club to do so, and another benefit of being owned by the fans) and the reason is simple - there are still many people who want to stand at football grounds - and many do in seated areas and incur the wrath of stewards etc causing a problem for the clubs AND creating unsafe areas where there is no fall arrest in front of people standing in a seated section. I doubt anyone on this thread has not fallen over the seat in front when going mad after a goal (if this has not happened to you, you obviously don't celebrate goals properly!).

 

Lets get the simple facts straight. Terracing never killed people at Hillsborough, but the risk of large crowds and the anarchy of terracing was outlawed in this country for all upper leagues. Yes the lower leagues were allowed to keep some terracing, proving it wasn't intrinsically unsafe, but it was all about numbers and barring a few anomalies to start with, the only terraces remaining are relatively small.

 

Taylor was as much about getting clubs to improve their facilities where the disasters at Ibrox, Bradford and Heysel had still not been enough to stop Hillsborough. Many grounds were time warps that needed a knee-jerk reaction to get them into the 21st century - making grounds all-seater pushed that change through - and to be fair it worked - safety and facilities are a million miles from the 80's.

 

Once all seated, clubs can't retrospectively make a stand standing again (if they drop out the top two divisions) but as has been shown with the Hillsborough investigations, the whole circumstances and findings of that day are now being brought into question and so it is also the right time to look at the issue of people standing at football grounds and more importantly, giving people the choice to do so - football fans are no longer the working class scum the authorities thought we were in 1989.

 

That said, just like you won't see a Fred Dibner type character demolishing buildings with a few burning tyres and a bit of hope, you won't see the 'old style' terraces return to this country. We are far too safety concious to go down that route for our major stadiums where large crowds gather and need controlling. So that means we have to look at the next best thing and the German's have the solutions.

 

At Dortmund they bring seats in for European games, this is labour intensive. The other solution is rail seating (the photo in the original post).

 

This is a 'fall-arrest' rail for every seated space with a seat locked in place, only ever unlocked for events which require all seated capacity (UEFA/ FIFA games). It's that simple. Talk on here of the seat being used by some and not others could only ever happen in a UEFA/FIFA type game and even if everyone still stands, the club is covered as the regs say a seat should be provided for all spectators, not that all must use them. So in reality the bolted seats are there to get around the regs.

 

Even if used as seats the rail in front does not obstruct the eye line of the seated person (please attend the Safe Standing Roadshow when it comes near your club - it's well worth it).

 

As for capacity. The Safe Standing advice is as much as 1.9 people standing per 1 seated (so almost double) is the potential capacity rise. That however would be dependant on many factors such as the depth of existing seat tread and location and amount of vomitories for ingress and egress. Also legislation would dictate. It wouldn't surprise me if the British government went for a 1:1 seat to standing space ratio if (and when) this is allowed so no capacities would rise.

 

This HAS to happen to give fans choice. Arguments of what it looks like is ridiculous - football grounds should perform their primary function, and not just 'look nice' when  empty for people who like uniform seating patterns!! I can only imagine people not 'getting' this idea are too young to understand the concept of terrace culture pre-Taylor and how important it was to defining clubs pre the sanitised era we live in today where people actually debate 'facilities' FFS!

 

Forum's like this one should be all over this campaign like a rash. Anyone who ever went to football grounds pre-Taylor, knows we are missing out on something in this country due to all-seater and the German's at Wembley the other night showed just how better their support is where the culture is still 'terrace based.' Yes Wembley is all-seater - but many of the German's simply didn't use them and that IS MORE UNSAFE than using a system where fans have fall-arrest systems built in.

 

As I said, my club Portsmouth, with the prospect of actually representing what fans want are on-board with this (the PST had been lobbying the club pre-administration and were getting somewhere with that, but now we are masters of our own destiny!). Also the Portsmouth North MP Penny Mordaunt is also involved with the lobbying in Parliament. This WILL happen,

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dkw

dkw

Posted
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Breaking news: Chelsea's new stadium is being built as we speak. I need some more Lego bricks though

I can draw trees and colour in if you need some landscaping, i rarely colour outside the lines too.
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Charles Ryder

Charles Ryder

Posted
Posted

There's a certain aptness in the fact that Lillie bridge is a railway depot, Stamford Bridge was once destined to be sold to Great Western.

 

Still, It's got to be the Bridge for me, a new build may well be architecturally pleasing but It won't be the same.

 

The camaraderie of the Shed End is outstanding. Who needs the likes of Buck and Gourlay when you have our fine upstanding spirit behind the club?

 

To be fair Buck is generally quite affable.

 

Buck, on the other hand, frightens me.

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