Disappointed but not Surprised

Yesterday (2 April 2008) the Bristol City Council Development Control Committee met to make decisions on a couple of planning applications including the revised plans for the Memorial Stadium.

We were disappointed, although not surprised, that the decision was once again to approve the plans for the commercial, residential and stadium development at the Memorial Ground site.

It was basically a fait accompli when Bryan Cadman of the Planning department explained to the councillors that since this was only a revision of the previous plans which were approved, Rovers could challenge the decision legally if the new plans were refused permission. In this light five of the councillors expressed grave concerns about height, shadowing, noise, pollution and the lack of disabled parking but then voted in favour.

All of these issues were raised with the previous planning application and sadly most of them were glossed over, or simply ignored. Many issues had never been satisfactorily quantified such as air quality and noise assessments. In short the scale of the impacts was never given sufficient consideration and all sacrificed for the vague notion of "the general good".

It is actually a sad day for the fans too. During both this application and the previous two the inappropriateness of the current site of the stadium has been acknowledge by all concerned.

Transport in the area is good for a residential area but inadequate for large volumes of visitors at larger matches, even with the laughable transport mitigation measures. Parking at current attendee levels is possible because of the non-residential roads around the common, but this will not scale up as attendee numbers increase. Like filling a bottle under a tap, it starts slowly but once the capacity in the main vessel is used the water races up the neck of the bottle.

Fans will find that unless they arrive four or five hours before a match they will have to park in areas much much further from the stadium than they are used to. This not only makes the experience for the fans less pleasant but may also deter the less dedicated fans from attending which ultimately hurts the club's income the the whole rationale for the increased stadium capacity.

The student flats and hotel have taken up a significant amount of space within the stadium site which precludes future expansion for the stadium. As many fans have noted 18,500 seats is a bit small for a Championship league stadium. This effectively draws a line over the ambitions of the club and suggests that it really has no plans to advance past League One. Had the club considered alternative sites and sold the Memorial Ground for residential development the club could have kept its options open. If the proposals actually get built, the club will find that it is stuck with a stadium it cannot sell and wont even own the the student flats because these are being sold off in advance to raise the finance for the build. If an alternative site did present itself at a later date, the club will not be able to move from the current site. What a shame.

The redevelopment proposals are also very disruptive to the current business of the club. We have heard rumours that even the club's board is not unanimous on whether the plans should be implemented. Once again fans face the prospect of buying season tickets without knowing where home matches will be played. Also nearly two full seasons of playing in exile will be detrimental to club morale and finances and may hinder the current progress the team is making within the leagues.

Last year when the last planning application was being decided the word that kept coming up was "sustainability". The student rooms were to be prefabricated off site and assemble at the ground offering efficient used of materials and reducing wasteage. The insulation of the building was to exceed building regulations by 10%. There was even an article in the Evening Post suggesting that wind turbines could be placed on the roof.

This year, the plans involve the student flats being constructed from cast concrete which is one of the most environmentally damaging building materials (because concrete is made by burning limestone at extreme temperatures, 1560C, which takes lots of fuel). No mention of the 10% better insulation than building regulations was made this time round, and the solar gain of the building will be reduced by changes in the position of rooms. And the wind turbines, well, no one took that article seriously.

The proposals were presented as a scaled down version of the previous plans, which was very misleading. As we have explained in an earlier post the hotel has always had 84 rooms and this has not changed, but the number of stadium hospitality boxes (which could be used by the hotel as extra rooms) has been reduced. There have always been 546 student bedrooms. They were divided into 106 flats before but have now been divided into 99 flats. That just means more students crammed into each flat, the external impact of the students will be the same. The height, despite claims has gone up with the plans as submitted in January and revisions since have increased them further. The hotel block is 3m taller, the turrets on the north side are taller, the north east corner is taller, the arched trusses are taller. The south corners have been drawn in away from the boundary wall, but the central section of the south side remains at the old position and now leans out closer to the boundary wall.

They have removed the conference centre but intend to use the restaurant for conferences instead. Just removing a dedicated room within the building has no external impact when the same function will take place at the stadium, but simply in a different room. The retail shop will be reduced in size by five square meters (only 1% of the total area) which is so insignificant it hardly bares mentioning.

The reductions they did not highlight were the education centre which is reduced to less than half the size of last years plans. The crèche too is to be halved in size.

There are also serious safety concerns that have not been fully addressed. The perimeter road that will be added around the outside of the stadium will be so narrow that it has to be a one way road and there will be no places which will allow turning or passing.

The fire department has stated that it will not be able to get a fire engine with a tall ladder (a large appliance as it is called) around the building. Access to the south, west and north sides of the building could become severely restricted if there was any kind of obstruction or debris in the roadway.

Evacuating the stadium also raises some concerns. Because the building itself now fills so much of the site, there will be little standing room outside the stadium building within the stadium site. This will make it harder for fans to exit the building before other fans have exited the site. During a mass exit, emergency vehicles such as fire engines or ambulances would not be able to enter the grounds and fire fighters and paramedics would have to proceed "on foot" and against the flow of spectators.

The surrounding area to will be placed at risk by cars parked illegally on street corners. This reduces visibility and makes driving and walking in the area more hazardous. But the main concern is that emergency vehicles are large and require clear corners to turn into many roads. Residents with chronic conditions such as heart disease or acute asthma who may frequently need to be collected by ambulance live in fear. And accidents can happen to anyone.

This is not the end of the story. There will be another S106 to be hammered out with the council. Rovers have not yet signed a deal with Opal the student letting firm which will buy the student flats and provide the finance for the project. With an unsettled property market and other economic gloom, this deal becomes less certain. Rovers board may also decide that this is not the right time to cash in the family silver and will save their most precious asset, the Memorial Ground, for when they actually need the capacity and are in a stronger financial position to build a better stadium at a more suitable site. The fact that Bristol City Football Club can find a new site shows that it is possible and we can all take heart in that.

Picture credit: Title: Bristol Council Photo by: FatMandy Licence: CC NonCommercial NoDerivs License