£10m Argyle stadium plan shows 'deliverable ambition' says James Brent
Plymouth Argyle owner and chairman James Brent claims that the £10m plans to increase capacity at the club's Home Park ground and redevelop the 'Higher Home Park' area, shows a 'deliverable ambition' in the short term.
Mr Brent remains committed to ensuring that Argyle have the potential to further expand if the team makes a return to the Championship, or achieves its ultimate dream of Premier League football in the future.
The club's plans which would deliver a new grandstand and a modest increase in spectator capacity to around 17,700, have come under scrutiny by the Argyle Fans Trust (AFT) Working Group who have delivered a costed proposal for their own, more ambitious redevelopment.
In a statement on their website, the Trust argues that "the design and capacity of the new stand should reflect the ambitions and aspirations of the club and its supporters, and provide appropriate financial support through facilities within it, whilst also being something that the club, the city and the wider community can be proud of."
In its initial response to the proposals last month, the AFT suggested that Argyle are able to draw larger crowds and should build a higher capacity stand and develop the ground now to enable further expansion when needed:
"A larger grandstand coupled with the ability to extend it and other parts of the ground in the future, in stages, would enable the capacity to be enlarged commensurate with the club’s position in the Football League. Furthermore the numbers of stadium seats per head of population is very low; an informal study showed PAFC ranks 55th out of 64 cities included."
The club has responded warmly to the Trust's work and counter proposal but dispute some of the AFT's figures for additional seating and are indicating its desire for a more measured growth plan.
James Brent said: “As a group of volunteers who, to my knowledge, have no experience of building similar structures, they (the Argyle Fans Trust) have worked hard to find a way of adding more seats at a relatively low cost.
“However, rightly, in my view, sporting stadia are subject to detailed regulations to ensure both the safety of our fans (e.g. in relation to escape routes) and their comfort (e.g. kiosks and toilet facilities). To meet these requirements, the space required for, and the cost of, the additional seats is materially greater than the AFT Working Group have assumed."
Mr Brent reiterated the perilous circumstances of the club's recent history: “The challenges we face today are that we have a dilapidated grandstand; we are losing money; and, last season, we finished fourth from the bottom of the Football League.
“We hope that John Sheridan’s appointment as manager and the team he is building will address the last point but, on its own, this is not sustainable. The new grandstand needs to help address these challenges in a sustainable manner – and, in our view, it will, providing high-quality hospitality for our fans and additional revenue to take us back up the leagues.
“Based on current averages, 60% of Home Park’s proposed capacity each match is empty and only 40% occupied. We really do not need additional seats now, or in the short-term. We need to improve our performances and attract more supporters to attend matches in better-quality facilities. We need to generate additional income to do this."
But he also moved to address fans' fears of a lack of ambition at the club and agreed to review the number of additional seats provided by the new grandstand:
“We can increase the capacity to more than 20,000 simply, quickly and economically. Engineers at BDP – one of the UK’s largest architectural practices, along with other members of the consultant team – have investigated, confirmed and costed this, and the AFT WG are encouraged to properly consider how this would be achieved (much of the work is pre-fabricated offsite and one lane to/from the car-park is closed out of season to assemble). Building seats that we can fill regularly makes good economic sense for the club; building seats that remain empty makes no sense at all.
“We will, however, review the possibility of adding around 200 seats – increasing the grandstand capacity to around 5,000 and the initial stadium capacity to the region of 18,000 – by reducing the depth to current proposed levels of seating."
The AFT is expected to issue a further response on its website.
Premier League dreams
James Brent revealed his dreams of Argyle one day playing Premier League football for the first time in its history:
“It is also conceivable that Argyle will at some point get promoted to the Premier League for the first time in its 126-year history and we may then have regular demand that exceeds 20,000.
“Does this scenario worry me? No! It is a really high-quality problem that we all dream of. We would need to look at more radical solutions but, armed with £60-70m a year of TV money and demand for seats that was regularly greater than our capacity, these radical solutions become credible solutions."
For more information, visit the Plymouth Argyle website http://www.pafc.co.uk/
