Car Park plans

Thought this deserved a thread of its own away from the redevelopment section as it was getting quite lengthy. So what will happen to the car park?

Perhaps I am overly sceptical but with a 3G pitch and no car park from what I see in the plans, I can’t see what’s positive about the future unless we’re just referring to Twerton as a village getting a better community hall or something

The plans don't show anything at all from what I can see. It is just planning zones. 

The cheapest thing to produce is a car park so no doubt any external space created will become a car park.

Oliver's idea of some airbnb accommodation is a good one. I believe other clubs have provided corporate facilities that double up as overnight accommodation. Although what we are really talking about is flexible space.

On this note, I’d like to say ‘well done’ to the staff on matchdays in charge of parking. It’s not exactly a simple layout with a host of allocated spaces, so it’s a tough gig.

Whatever is done it can’t be much worse than how it is now. My tyres go through the mill every other Saturday.

I always thought that Yeovil's new ground had the worst car park for access until I saw the pandemonium at Dartford's last Saturday. If ever there was an advertisement for not using the car...

(Really hope Havant pip them for the title tomorrow)

stillmanjunior wrote:On this note, I’d like to say ‘well done’ to the staff on matchdays in charge of parking. It’s not exactly a simple layout with a host of allocated spaces, so it’s a tough gig.

Whatever is done it can’t be much worse than how it is now. My tyres go through the mill every other Saturday.

I thought you parked for free on the ' High Street shop's ' area!!!

once the car park gets re developed, i guess its back to the high street for Curos staff cars and vans

Appreciate that it’s only planning but surely whatever happens we will have sufficient car park space?


Always believed in my naivety that it would simply be a large stand all along the length of the pitch with accommodation inside not the car park area itself

Please tell me I’ve been daft and not read the plans well enough and that we will of course have a car park!!

I believe there is every intention to have car parking spaces, although the plans suggest that it will be down on the present capacity.

So less car park space, 3G pitch banned by football league and housing developer involved- forgive me for being sceptical

How else is anyone going to generate enough profit to be able to afford to build someone a brand new stadium for free?

And where else is the land going to come from for them to be able to do it other than car parking space? But the planners will be equally concerned that there is an adequate balance between the facilities and parking, although councils up and down the country are notoriously anti-car.

My main worry is that the club has gone down this route before selling off parcels of land to keep the club going for a bit. What makes this time any different?

It will only be different if what we are left with gives us enough to be self-financing in the future. We have to be quite robust about the facilities that will be provided. Anyone who has any ideas about what could be incorporated that would generate a decent return needs to be suggesting them now.

the redevelopment could go either way in my view so some land sell off was the right thing to do on balance, but gambling on 3G revenue and losing car park space to me seems far too surreal

I wonder if anyone has considered the idea of a multi-storey stadium - with parking and some functions underneath and the pitch on top ?

It's not uncommon in Europe, and St Patrick's Athletic in Dublin are proposing to do it for a new stadium there : https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/soccer/national-league/st-patrick-s-athletic-to-unveil-plan-for-a-new-12-000-seater-stadium-1.3457504

Bath is esssentially like an island when it comes to land, so as a city we need to maximise the use of it in sensible and creative ways. A sports pitch is dead space, so by putting it on top of active space you would make much better use of it. It would enable maximum use of the TP site, maximise parking (enabling more income for the club via e.g. still renting space to Curo), the creation of a neighbourhood shopping centre under the stadium/pitch etc. It wouldn't be hugely more expensive than the traditional model of pitch at ground floor level and stuff around it, and would be a lot cheaper than digging down to create undercroft space. And given that Twerton Park was dug out of a hill/slope, a one-storey structure with a pitch and stands on top would be just returning part of the site back to its original elevation.

Would all come down to whether the value of the extra space you could create would be worth sufficiently more than the cost of creating it. Hopefully it's something that the club and its architects at least consider.

There is a huge problem carting soil from a site nowadays and the current idea is to dump excavated soil on the pitch to level it. That may not prove viable but it under consideration. So putting facilities under the pitch makes that problem worse.

It has occurred to me though that if you moved the pitch nearer to the high street then you could easily do it. This would then free up more space on the Poplar side.