Nottingham Forest are using the architects who oversaw Liverpool’s recent expansion of Anfield to help with new-look plans to turn the City Ground into a stadium with a capacity of up to 45,000.
Three months after obtaining planning permission to
start their home ground’s long-awaited redevelopment, Forest have now decided
to shelve those designs in favour of a more ambitious overhaul of the stadium
that has been their home, beside the River Trent, since 1898.
The Premier League club had previously intended to demolish
the Peter Taylor Stand — the oldest, and smallest, of the City Ground’s four —
and replace it with an entirely new structure, increasing capacity from just
over 30,000 to around 35,000. Work was due to begin next year.
Among sweeping changes, however, the club have been
exploring alternative proposals to remove the roof of the Peter Taylor, then
build over the existing structure to turn it into one of the biggest stands in
English football, tripling its number of seats to 15,000. To put it into
context, that would be 1,500 more than the largest stand at Chelsea’s Stamford
Bridge can hold. The new stand would be 58m (190ft) tall, whereas the previous
application proposed one of 38m.
At the same time, Forest want to fill in the corners on
either side of the Trent End, joining it up with the adjacent stands to provide
around 5,000 more seats.
One of the more intriguing parts of Forest’s plans is that
they are re-examining whether it is possible to construct a new Peter Taylor
Stand around the existing structure without causing the disruption that would
be involved if it were demolished at the start of the building work. This is
the way it happened at Anfield, ensuring that capacity did not have to be
dramatically reduced by the stadium being, in effect, only three-quarters
operational on matchdays.
Before anything, Forest have to again obtain planning
permission, and that will be far from straightforward given the challenges they
encountered before getting approval for their previous proposals.
The delays have been considerable and, though the idea was
ultimately shelved, the club gave serious consideration at one stage to leaving
the City Ground altogether for a new 50,000-capacity stadium at Toton,
southwest of their home city on the Nottinghamshire-Derbyshire border. Instead,
Forest have appointed property experts Savills to inform the relevant
authorities they will be submitting a new planning application for their
existing site.
No mention is made of a time frame or what would happen in
the worst-case scenario of Forest, currently 17th in the 20-team table, being
relegated from England’s top division this season or in the near future.
However, that has also been a concern in two of their three previous campaigns
and it has never impacted the desire at the top of the club to create what they
see as being the biggest stadium in the East Midlands.
If Forest are to get consent once more, they will have to
convince the authorities that the benefits outweigh the issues caused by a
significant increase in spectator numbers and road traffic, bringing issues
with pollution, parking and congestion in what is largely a residential area.
The club did briefly look into whether it might be feasible
to follow Tottenham Hotspur’s example and build an entirely new stadium on
their existing site. However, the decision at the time was that there was not
enough space because of the restrictions caused by the neighbouring river.
Comments
Post a Comment