Back to Basics

In a long running campaign like this it is easy to get caught up in the day to day aspects and then to forget the primary reasons for things.

HorfieldROSE and other people who oppose this stadium plan are not anti-sport. Many of the members of HorfieldROSE are football or rugby supporters, but when one looks at all of the factors in these plans the detrimental aspects far outweigh the benefits. There are many good reasons for wanting a new and better stadium, but not just any stadium because the one that is being planned, is not good for Bristol, it is not good for the clubs, the fans or the resident's who will have to live with it.

The Wrong Location

When the Memorial Ground was established in 1921 in memory of all those who had died in WWI, it was a set of rugby pitches with a covered wooden terrace stand in an established Victorian residential area near the edge of the city. Both players and spectators would be drawn from the surrounding area and most would arrive on foot.

Times have changed and so has the city. Nearly a century of development and the Memorial Ground is now land locked in a huge sprawl of housing suburbs. Attendees to matches now come from much greater distances, cars are the primary mode of transport, and sport has become much more commercial.

All of these factors make the site less appropriate for today's needs. All seater stadiums are always bigger than terraced stadiums with the same capacity. Changing the stadium from mainly terraced to all seater and at the same time increasing the capacity by 50% makes the necessary structure significantly larger completely filling the site. This is not good for the neighbours of the stadium, but it also means that the stadium will not be able to expand, gives no area outside the stadium for activities and also presents crowd management and safety issues.

Despite being near a showcase bus route, there are simply not enough buses passing to bring even a fifth of the fans to a sold out match, so most fans are forced to drive. The stadium is two miles from any dual carriage roads and the A and B roads that do come near the stadium become clogged and congested very quickly especially around junctions.

Large numbers of people coming by car means there is a huge demand for parking. Currently the non-residenttial roads around the common soak up a large number of the cars coming into the area. But as the numbers increase, fans will be forced to park further and further from the stadium.

The increased congestion and time it will take for people to find parking spaces will not only detract from the experience of the stadium users but also presents a real hazard to safety in the area and restricts the ability of emergency vehicles to move within and through the area. This will be even more important after the E&A moves from Frenchay hospital to Southmead hospital.

Time to consider other sites

In 2002 a search for an alternative site within the Bristol City Council boundary was done and this concluded that there were no available alternative sites. Six years have passed and many things have changed. Bristol City FC managed to find a new site last year.

Avonmouth had been ruled out because it is on the flood plane, but this week a bread factory has been granted permission there and other developments have also been allowed by the Environment Agency.

The eastern fringe of the city is also being developed on greenfield land around Emersons Green.

A stadium in any of these areas would have room to expand, and better road links. Any search that considered sites in parts of Bristol covered by South Gloucester Council would increase the number of possible sites dramatically.

Current Plans not good for Bristol, Fans or Residents

Bristiol

The current plans are described as a £40 million stadium but less than half of that is going on the stadium and the rest goes into the student accommodation, hotel, offices and so on. This is not going to be a great stadium by anyone's standards.

Bristol needs good sporting venues and it would be good if these could also be used for other large events like concerts. However, because of the inappropriate location of the Memorial Stadium, other uses are being restricted by conditions in the planning permission. Even if they were not, the same transport problems would plague visitors to other events as well. At least as regular visitors sports fans would know the area better than visitors to occasional events.

Since the site is not city centre getting to it by public transport is difficult. Since most bus routes go to the centre, anyone not already on the showcase bus route will have to travel into the centre, change buses and then head up the Gloucester Road. This is why people drive instead. Since driving is inevitable, it would be much better to find a site that is either central or has better transport links.

As mentioned before, there are only two A&E departments within Bristol and to have one of them snarled up in match day traffic jams will not be of benefit to the city.

The Fans

No one would deny the poor state of the current facilities, but the fans and the clubs will not be well served by better facilities in the wrong location.

At 18,500 capacity, the stadium is much bigger than the current one, but not big by Championship league standards. The stadium could be a serious impediment to advancement because it already fills the site and cannot be expanded, and the student accommodation will make it impossible to sell the site and move in the future. If the plans are built it will be the last stadium Rovers will ever own and it will never be bigger than 18,500.

And that assumes it gets built. Even now this project has cost the club in terms of money spent getting it this far, disruption to the sale of tickets due to uncertainty about where the teams will be playing. And by taking on an overambitious project and failing to deliver the Rovers board leaves yet more fans disenchanted with the whole experience. Considering how well the team has done over the last year it is a shame that this project sours that success.

Residents

One of the key things that many people forget is that this is not just a larger stadium, it is a stadium with a student block, hotel, offices and other uses bundled with it. This is no longer just about a better sporting venue, this is a large commercial development.

This changes a lot of things. One of the consolations for living near a stadium is that it is essentially dormant 300 days of the year.

The student blocks (which will essentially be the outer walls of the stadium) will be seven storeys high and have literally hundreds of windows on each side looking down into the back gardens of the surrounding houses on all four sides. The roof trusses of the stadium will be a couple of meters short of the height of Cabot Tower. This is an extremely tall building bang in the middle of Victorian terraced homes.

An additional 546 students in the area will change the character of the area and will generate more journeys. Local pubs and restaurants will be overrun by students because there is no break out space or recreational area for students on the stadium site. Also as a living facility the number of lorries servicing the building for deliveries, refuse collection and so on will increase dramatically and every day of the year.

Summary

Everyone deserves a better stadium than this. The city needs something it can be proud of, that people can get to easily and that can be used for sports and other activities. The club needs a venue that will be able to grow with its successes and will not be an impediment to fans because parking is too miserable, or indeed because ticket prices at an all seater venue prove to be prohibitive.

Hopefully, the recent withdrawal of Opal will provide time for reflection and opportunities for a different and better plan in a more suitable location.

Opal Student Accommodation Abandons Stadium Project

Update

This story has been covered in most of the media this evening. 

Also the "quote" from HorfieldROSE member Toby Lewis in the Evening Post article is a very crude paraphrase and not a direct quote (what is printed in the paper does not even make logical sense). The point being made was that HorfieldROSE has always contended that this is the wrong site for the stadium because of the lack of transport infrastructure such as parking and transport, and that it would have been better for this to be stopped through a logical decision rather than financial difficulties.


The following statement has appeared on the Bristol Rovers web site today:

The directors of Bristol Rovers Football Club have recently been made aware that the preferred student accommodation provider negotiating the stadium regeneration is no longer able to progress the project.

As a result the club has entered into negations with an alternative provider.

A further statement will be made next week.

The preferred student accomodation provider was Opal and it was Opal that was to provide £32 million of the funds for the stadium redevelopment (£8 was to be found).

Opal has been in the frame for a very long time and were involved in the S106 negotiations on the previous planning application that was signed this January. Bringing in a new company at this late stage is unlikely to be easy.

One of the key things about Opal is that they do not currently have any student properties in Bristol and this was their foot in the door. Other companies such as Unite which do operate in Bristol will be less willing to pay such a large sum for the student block at the Memorial Stadium.

The other thing to consider is why Opal, who have been very committed to the project, have pulled out. This surely has to do with their ability to raise this sort of finance in the current economic environment. If Opal are finding it difficult then other companies will too.

On Friday 16 May Bristol Community Radio 93.2FM Rovers director Edward Ware said that tenders from the building contractors were due to be received on "Monday week" (which oddly meant the bank holiday Monday, 26 May 2008). Either Mr Ware got his dates wrong or the Rovers board have decided not to share the value of the tenders yet.

The £40 million cost for the stadium is only the Rovers own estimate. The actual bids that the building contractors may return could be higher than this. Perhaps this is what has brought things to a head with Opal, if they were being pressed for even more to finance the build.

Once again fans are left in the dark by the Rovers board. It will be very interesting to hear the "further announcement" by the Rovers board next week.

Rovers in the News

Rovers have been in the papers quite a bit over the last two weeks, and not just on the sports pages. The article on Friday 2 May 2008 "How Rovers Paid Up In Stadium Bid" is quite odd. The article blames the 12 months of delays to the stadium development, in part, on a financial settlement with ex-directors of the club.

"A club spokesman claimed one reason for the delay - which, he said, could not be revealed to the public while it was going on last year - was an issue over the purchase from former directors Colin Williams and Mike Turl of the two houses and of shares held in the club."

It is not clear why it could not be revealed, and the strange thing is that this issue was covered in much greater detail in a Western Daily Press article on 14 October 2006, three months before the planning application even went to the planning committee. So the issues were already very much in the public domain and basically amount to the repayment of loans made by the ex-directors to the club. No big controversy.

On Tuesday 29 April 2008 the article "Gas Opt For Cheltenham" contained several surprises. First was the cost of building the stadium had increased a further £5 million bringing the total to £40 million. This is still only an estimate and the actual cost will not be known until the club receives bids from the three contractors that have been asked to tender. The firm Balfour Beatty (which bought Cowlins last year) has declined to bid "for purely commercial reasons".

The second surprise was Nick Higgs saying "We will be looking to get back here as soon as possible. Maybe with just three sides of the ground finished". This would mean the south stand within the stadium would not be built, probably ever. The new stadium building almost completely fills the stadium site with only a single lane road going around the perimeter of the site. All traffic entering the site including cars, deliveries, refuse collection and emergency vehicles will have to follow this road around the building as there is no turning room anywhere.

It would therefore be impossible to have any construction work going on while the building is in use because no traffic would be able to use the perimeter road. Access for cranes and movement of large structural elements would be problematic. Conceivably the whole facility (including the student flats and hotel) could be shut down in the summer but it will be far more costly to construct the south stand after the building was put into use and so becomes that much less likely to happen.

The third surprise was Higgs saying "that 80 per cent of the project would be financed by the building of student accommodation for 546 people, with the rest of the balance to come from commercial letting." The deal with Opal (the company that will buy and run the student flats) is not signed and even they will be affected by the current economic climate. But the remaining 20 percent of £40 million (which is £8 million) will be from "commercial letting". Big money for a company with a turnover last year of £4.9 million, a profit of £740k and debts of £2.7 million.

Since no buyers have come forward for the hotel, serious questions should be asked about how this further £8 million will be raised and what assets will be sold or mortgaged to get the money. Will Rovers actually own anything after all the contracts are signed?

Seeing the reader comments on all of these articles, fans are obviously not impressed and feel they are being lied to and kept in the dark about what is really going on at the club. Delay after delay for the start of stadium work is being supported by feeble excuses such as "negotiations over public art" and now "two pre-season friendlies" and "buying back properties from ex-directors". As one fan said in the Evening Post comments section "Come on Evening Post, get on with some proper journalism and find out what's really going on? They must think we are stupid."