Thetownend.com

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/s/swindon_town/7692955.stm

Hurrah, home is where the heart is.

Good.

The north stand needs redeveloping for more corporate stuff. Thats about it.

Maybe when the council see they have a board that are trying to give as well as take from the local community they will stop bankrupting the club with rent payments.

The rent payments aren't really that much though.

300k a year ish?

Have we stopped paying for the North stand yet?

Try half of that, and about 2/5 of that is based on attendances. Base rent is circa £90k, but it varies according to the retail price index.

Good news. I don't want to watch my football in a identikit plastic bowl.

Hurrah - I love the CG.

I wonder if there really is a second concourse in the Don Rogers Stand or this was just something they made up to make the County Ground site sound more exciting?

Rebuild the North stand, town end and stratton bank, job done.

There was talk of buying the cricket pitch wasn't there to expand?

Think there was talking of trying to re-located the cricket club so the Club could use the space.

I think the idea was that the football club bought the king edwards place in wanborough where they train, then re-locate the cricket club up.

I think someone else has bought King Edwards place since then

There was Ralphy. Although the cricket pavillion has to remain, which limits your options for what you do with the land once you've bought it...even if the ground redevelopment wouldn't be anywhere near it

Arkells - maybe make it two tier with corporate boxes similar to...

[url width=603 height=222]http://www.footballgroundguide.com/peterboro21.jpg[/url]

Town End - Maybe an all seater stand (with provision for safe standing) like...

[url width=603 height=274]http://www.footballgroundguide.com/colchester_south_stand.jpg[/url]

Stratton Bank - A Smaller stand similar to.. (or identical to the picture above)

[url width=603 height=266]http://www.footballgroundguide.com/hartlepool3.jpg[/url]

Obviously with red seats, similar roof structure so it's tidy or whatever and the DR Stand stays the same?

On another note are teams in the lower 2 divisions allowed to build grounds with terracing? If so Obviously need a terrace area

what we need is something like this the only problem is filling it



http://www.cardiffcitystadium.co.uk/

It's now The Liddington Hotel.

Would love to see this kind of stadium and ideally on top of the CG...never going to happen though, is it!

I think we'd be looking at something similar to Plymouth.

I still like the plans the Trust drew up

but then again I could be everso slightly biased

Minus the old Mayflower stand of course.

I was at Home Park last season shortly before I moved to the North East, the away fans were chanting, mocking the Mayflower with the usual "what the fucking hell is that" chant... when the singing died down all you could hear was the furious screeching of only one fairly large middle aged chap defending his beloved former terrace.

It was quite amusing.

Fred,

You should have heard Fitton on RS on Saturday afternoon saying that they see the CG as a gateway to the Town centre development...virtually exactly the same words the Trust used when they launched their plans.

I've got a sneaky feeling AF might have seen the Trust plans...

I think this is great news.  The County Ground's location cannot be bettered.  The club belongs in the heart of Swindon, not on its periphery.  Why would we want to relocate to a development site 5 miles from the centre of town (and probably 5 miles from a decent pub)?

Too much development in recent years has taken place on the edge of town, leaving a dead centre.  (Jean Saunders might even agree with that bit.)  Good to hear AF wants to keep us where we are.

Good news, I prefer the idea of a redeveloped CG.

I do wonder how it is going to be posssible to finance it though, even the trust plans looked unlikley to ever happen in my view (not a dig as such, they were a shit load better than the old boards)

I can't be arsed to walk further than the CG so this is good news indeed.

We should go retro.

Make it exactly like it was in 1989......

I would question how many fans really, truly wanted to relocate from the County Ground site? It's in such an ideal location for home and away fans alike.

Does this mean re-development is now officially near the top of Fitton's do to list?

I think it's important that we have a stadium to be proud of. I'm cautious of us building another generic stadium like all the rest though, abit of originality would be good.

The new board have been sent a copy of the plans when they first got in and we have spoken to them about the plans, and about how they would need to be modified. For example, the planning/political landscape has moved on (e.g. we posited the idea of a community sports/leisure hub partly on rebuilding bits of the Oasis at the CG which is now being done elsewhere) and the new board are in a much better position to capitalise such a project so some of the stuff we proposed (e.g. flats in the side of the stand) may not now be necessary. The core of what we proposed though is still viable, but I'd think the current board could do it better than some of the assumptions we had to work on at the time. Which isn't to say that AF and co are in any way copying the Trust proposals - the bottom line is the reason those proposals gained so much ground with the council etc is that they made sense. AF/NW will look at all viable options and do the most realistic/best solution. If some of that follows the lines we suggested, it's because they've found similar factors as we did when we did our research. There's no copyright on common sense.

As Nick Watkins put to me, the CG lease expires in 2011, we either need to renew the lease or find a new home. Obiously the redevelopment comes with the lease negotiations, but it seemed to me as if it was the preferred option.

Name dropper......

As Don Rogers Shop put to me, Herthab is a cunt.

They are having discussions with the council, and I'm sure they will be discussing the lease but the core thing though is the ownership model of the CG before they can discuss redevelopment, who will own the rights to the new CG, will the council be part funding, what about the covenent currently in place etc etc

I'm not sure how it would work, regarding the covenant, (& it may help them here) but couldn't they negotiate with the council to BUY the freehold.
Now is the time to buy with prices of land at a low, & the crowds (& rent) lower than they are likely to be in the future.
 

  There's an extended article in today's Adver on what AF said at teh AGM,

  Nothing we don't already know, but it is good news for the traditionalists, personally I think it's very much a case of believe it when you see it....anything that involves SBC is very unlikely to see the light of day anytime soon.

  Readers may recall a few years back teh incoming Tory admin produced a list of 50 must do items by 2010...none of which were to do with STFC....they've done the library, and fair play for that, I like the idea of my Council Tax funding a job for Larwood.

 And a quick perusal of the 50 promises, does suggest some moves towards targets, like 50% recycling..but this wish list was writing in an economic boom time. It's very difficult to see SBC suddenly making STFC a priority for 2011.

Saw that Reg..regarding Newcastle etc,go to Newcastle alot and am always amazed how good a ground bang in the centre of the City....a revamped County Ground would look very imposing IMO,really good to see Fitton thinking of such things in detail and not just glory hunting,i for one would sooner have a our ground ware it is.

Don't know if we'd be able to buy the land. Going to be hard to find a loan in this economic climate.

Any ground redev would require a degree of capital investment up-front. For a genuine investment, as opposed to chucking money into a wage bill, that may be something the owners would be prepared to front up for, rather than seeking a commercial loan, at least in partnership with developers. And I don't think buying out the freehold of the stadium itself would cost a huge amount.

The surrounding land would cost a little more of course, but if you're not planning on putting hundreds of houses on it, then as I understand it needn't necessarily cost the full commercial value if developed for housing (ie the £25m or whatever). Plus if you're working in partnership with the local authority to develop facilities for the benefit of the community, as opposed to, say, demanding land for free that you want to develop solely for private greed, that also gives the local authority considerably more scope to reach a favourable deal.