Redevelopment

Steve Whites Missus wrote:

comrade powell wrote:Result of the vote, as announced to Society members this evening....

YES 226 (89%)
NO 28 (11%)

For no other motive... just interest... what percentage of votes (254) to total available to vote?

I don't know the exact number, but it was mentioned at this week's EGM that the total membership is presently around 500.

Admittedly I haven’t looked at finances in depth but I always believed the key to revenue was accommodation with 3G as a “bonus.

As a side issue to this topic I think there may have been some discussion on development finance at the Society IGM in Jan 2018. I am unable to find any report on that meeting so am assuming nothing has been issued. I may, however, not be looking in the correct location.

If we are going to talk about football traditions then I would like a return to some of the things lost from the game.
Ballboys and girls -  what has happened to them?
Leather balls with laces that weigh 4lb in the wet - these modern balls whip around like a balloon.
Steel toed boots with sides that covered the ankles - the irony is that when they played in these you were less likely to see players rolling around on the turf as if shot
Centre partings - much preferable to a Pogba
Rattles - modern stadia are like morgues
Rosettes - where oh where did these go?
People with tea urns strapped to their back wandering around the crowd - the tea was so stewed you could paint the lavvie wall with it
Ah memories

Now that the season has ended I have been thinking more about the Redevelopment. Having supported City from the days of Charlie Fleming, I am looking forward to seeing the detailed plans. But there are two things in particular that I have read and should be viewed together.
1) The redevelopment will be on one side of the ground only, ie the main stand.
2) The Club intends to level the playing surface be it grass or 3G.
Viewing the playing area, I would assume the perimeter wall is approximately the same height all the way round, so as the pitch slopes I presume the perimeter wall follows the same contours. Now what bothers me is its stated spoil will be relocated from the higher end to the lower end, will this be two feet? three? more? (How much is the variance from one end to the other?) This will leave us with the wall at the Bristol end maybe six or seven feet above pitch level, whilst down at the exit corner the top of the wall could be level with the pitch!. Now I may be over thinking some of this, but I would like to know, can somebody tell me the measure of the drop from its highest point to the lowest, as I cannot see how we can level the playing surface without considerable work to the perimeter wall and possibly even some of the terracing.

I personally think this is a non-starter but I would like to be proved wrong. The pitch is over 8 feet higher at the Bristol/Freeview corner than the turnstile corner. The idea is to dump the spoil from excavations on the pitch to level it out. So it would actually be 8ft higher at Mo-B-Q than it is now.

This is the narrowest part of the site with housing the other side of the fence. I cannot see the planners allowing the ground at the boundary to be raised 8ft. It would also make exiting more difficult as it is already excessively steep. I think you would lose quite a lot of terracing at the Bath end, even if you could make the new stand work.

But that is why there are stadium designers involved - to crack these problems.

I think you only have to remove 4ft from one end and then add it to the other end to make it level.

Yes, it's about 8 feet, so, if we level the pitch, the pitch will be 4 feet lower at the Bristol end and 4 feet higher at the Bath end, whose wall is 3 feet tall! If the pitch is moved towards the Bristol end, where the terracing is excellent and will be even higher than now, that will give opportunity to do something at the Bath end, whose terrace is not great anyway. We'd need a new wall and then build up new terracing.
At the Bristol end, we had the terrace barriers strengthened on the car park side. I had the idea that if we were going to stay at the ground during the redevelopment, we could put the seats from the stand onto the far side of the Bristol terrace, and put up a roof as well. But now, more and more people like standing on the Bristol end, so the best thing to do would be to strengthen the barriers on the far side, and then the whole of the Bristol end would be a safe place to stand, and would hold a couple of thousand.
I am slightly worried as to how the Popular side terracing will look, once the pitch is levelled.

Peter Newman wrote:I think you only have to remove 4ft from one end and then add it to the other end to make it level.

Not sure that's what is planned. I thought we were putting the excavated spoil from the redevelopment area over the existing pitch area to level it and avoid paying vast sums to cart it away. If we were just doing a cut and fill on the pitch we wouldn't be using the arising from the redevelopment.
Of course, until working details are drawn up and quantities calculated, we can only guess the volume of surplus spoil we are looking to spread over the pitch.

BenE wrote:But that is why there are stadium designers involved - to crack these problems.

That is the most sensible thing said so far.

Accept my comment was too simplistic. As far as I am aware the quoted 8ft is the maximum difference in levels. The pitch slopes both west to east and from south to north so the overall impact on the poplar side may not be severe as imagined.

Sir Ged Roddy wrote:Yes, it's about 8 feet, so, if we level the pitch, the pitch will be 4 feet lower at the Bristol end and 4 feet higher at the Bath end, whose wall is 3 feet tall!

The pitch is soggiest at the NE corner and lowering it at all will make that worse. Something would have to be done with the drainage.

Indeed that would also be true with 3G.

I do get a bit confused by the references to north, south, east and west in relation to the pitch. Presumably the main stand side is north and the Popular Side south, the Bath end east and the Bristol end west? On that basis, is it correct to assume that BenE’s reference to the north east corner is the Bath end by Mo-b-que?

When I first heard about the idea of levelling the pitch, the potential problem for the wall and terracing at the Bath end (and possibly the Popular side) hadn’t occurred to me, and it will be interesting to see how this is overcome.

Sorry I was imagining the pitch as if you were looking at it from the main stand which only works if you are in my head (no one wants to go there). You are quite right the main stand is actually on the north side which is why you look into the sun on that side. 

So the soggy corner is the SW which is where I think Sir Ged was talking about lowering.

Forgive my ignorance on this subject of ground levelling ,but to my simple mind wouldnt the level of the pich remain the same slope n all just the grass removed and relayed with the plastic flat4G.
Surely any levelling would be done on the car park site for the new probably steel and block structure of the grandstand with all ammenities being on a sub level where the turnstyles are now, corporate and stand as they are now . raising or lowering anything at pitch level will surely bring issues resident wise at either end.

No - the redevelopment working group are considering levelling the pitch at the same time. This is irrespective of 3G or not.

Next presentation of latest stadium plans -

Wednesday 31st October, 2pm-8pm in Reynolds (Western) Limited Lounge at Twerton Park, High Street, Bath, BA2 1DB. (If disabled access is required please call 01225 423087 to make arrangements).
Saturday 3rd November, 12pm-3pm

http://www.bathcityfc.com/twerton-park-redevelopment-prepares-for-next-stage-of-consultation/

I see that Joe Scofield - who has had a lot to say about the redevelopment previously despite living in Southdown - has had letters published in the Chronicle for two weeks in a row now.

He seems to be making a lot of the same points as he did previously, especially in regard to the student accommodation, although I think his comment at the end of this week’s letter to the extent that the club has an aging fan base and is living on borrowed time is a bit out of order and not really relevant to the argument.

I wonder how many games he has been to.

as I see it we gain £millions for losing 40 odd parking spaces, so the time spent ensuring the plans meet with approval from reasonable local people is time well spent. The difficulty having observed other schemes is if a person becomes unreasonable and gets very vocal or public about their views. Hopefully our chairman can bring lessons from bath rugby's experience with serious objectors.

as I see it we gain £millions for losing 40 odd parking spaces, so the time spent ensuring the plans meet with approval from reasonable local people is time well spent. The difficulty having observed other schemes is if a person becomes unreasonable and gets very vocal or public about their views. Hopefully our chairman can bring lessons from bath rugby's experience with serious objectors.

Fortunately the council with see through rabble rousing rhetoric and deal with proposals and objections on their merits. 
I like the fact the the social aspects will be within the club's control as this will ensure they are less prone to commercial pressures (although they must be commercially sustainable).

I dont think joe is rabble rousing,just being a mouthpiece for those who live in twerton and part of a local group on social media, 'Proud of Twerton & Whiteway " who ask questions and do a lot to bring some of the local residents worries,problems to the notice of local councillors. You dont have to live in twerton to do that

I think this line from one of his posts on Facebook show exactly where he is coming from:

I wouldn't shed any tears if [the football club] f****d off and went somewhere else.

And wasn't he was the driving force behind the unfounded scaremongering over the future of The Magic Wok?

Hes quite entitled to his own opinion on the club, the unfounded scaremongering about the magic wok, last i heard they will still close except the final date has been extended a little.