Breaking News - New Stadium and Training Facilities

[notinmyname]

Excellent points they were

i

Aw thanks dude! You do realise that you are meant to moan and whine and belittle people on Scottish football forums tho? Maybe need to practice your put downs....

[Mason89]

Anyway - points made - feel free to chose a random sentence from my detailed and nuanced responce to rail against

No bother

the club haven't spent 5m on consultants for nothing

Still f*cking about after all these years would suggest it wasn't money well spent

[notinmyname]

No bother



Still f*cking about after all these years would suggest it wasn't money well spent

Well played!

Absolutely no ROI thus far.... point ire at council + nimbies tho surely? Club needs to pay for consultancy to fully examine situation x3 (ish reuse permitted) and make political case... council bods (plus potential funding partners re 2008 ) bugger it up... rinse and repeat. Why dthis time should be waved through - enough is enough - to hell with another round of this BS

[red_mist]

"I sat in high in the Dick Donald stand at the Limassol game with a friend who has been at Pittodrie many times but not in the DD. He looked round and said all that was needed was three wrap around stands replacing the South, Merkie and Main stands and we would have a decent ground for about half the cost of Kingsford. A third of our support walk to the ground and people park at all points of the compass. At Kingsford everyone will have to go by car or bus and the traffic problems getting up to 20,000 fans out of the ground at the end of the game will be horrendous. There is no reason why Pittodrie could not have been redeveloped over the last 20 years other than the fact that Milne never intended doing so. He always intended demolishing our home of 114 years and covering it in flats. He has let the ground deteriorate over that time and then claimed that it was too expensive to maintain and we would have to move. We are the only major club in Scotland to move to a new stadium in our case to a site well outside the city and if we do move we should rename the club Aberdeenshire FC. I suspect that crowds will be no better than at present at Kingsford and may well be worse. That plus the debt we will be taking on could put the future of the club in doubt. That would be some legacy for Milne to leave us with. If we have to leave Pittodrie ( and I don't think we do) it should only be for a site across the road at the beach where there is plenty of room and it would tick all the boxes of the current site."


great post - pittodrie re-developed stand by stand - there's never been decent reasons given on why this cannot be done.

training pitches can be anywhere in the city - coupled with use of sports village, the club would only require use of good quality grass pitches... how about partnership with Aberdeen Uni to invest in and use the Kings College pitches??

[stansmith]

Ok so upfront I'm not here to be a keyboard hero and talk about how much more I know than everyone else... not my thing - did that 25 years ago when I was a young student and the aberdeen maillist was de rigueur. Grew up and learned my lesson! (Interesting meeting ups tho!

So to various cogent points! We should base no decision on various posturing refuseniks nor indeed rabid 'get-it-built-ers' nothing ever gets done by shouting loudest. If someone enjoys local football and enjoys the football experience of walking to a local team then the banks of dee actually provide a much more authentic experience! Some of my best experiences of football have been following devronvale down to the central belt (never lived with in Banff but the old boy is from there so it's a great experience). If someone is a fan of aberdeen they should go where the club thinks is best, rather than narrowly prioritise their own experience at the expense of the wider good. We can all fantasise about other ideal scenarios (what no railway!!! Where's the roof... summer football) but the club haven't spent 5m on consultants for nothing (soil specialists at pittodire etc) and if we're honest they have probably been shafted by council turnover and resetting of relationships per election cycle.

So we are where we are... emotions (mine included) and a seeming minority (going by the 60% drive figure above plus others) who cling to pittodrie and are less than enthused by the change to 'pint/walk' that constitutes their match day experience (no doubt a great experience but...). To offset this you have misery of driving (again it's 60%) of people from all over the north east having to negotiate the nightmare that us aberdeen's under invested road infrastructure.

I think energies (such as they are) might be better deployed on defining the match day experience people want. Is it a fan zone? Is it, might it be, a US style tailgate... something else? The idea I find strange is that pubs that pay nothing to the club provide an experience that the club couldn't out perform massively! Two (of many) examples... ed fest - pop up bars all over the place that chrge London prices! Weather - Nordic countries have outdoor 'social' sporting events in worse weather than kingsford (another advantage of getting away from the beach btw)

Anyway - points made - feel free to chose a random sentence from my detailed and nuanced responce to rail against

The point everyone is missing is this isn't for the wider good.

We'll be left with a cheap stadium no one really likes in a hated location, spending £50m to do so.

[red_mist]

Just had a wee nosey at stadiums in planning/design and came across these of similar capacity:

Slovan Bratislava - 22,500 - £54m





Bristol Rovers - 20,000 - £40m

I'm really concerned that Bristol Rovers is the Kingsford template, its like McDiarmid Park MkII... shallow stands... a long way from the pitch... terrible!!

Most on here want a stadium to improve atmosphere; its not rocket science:

- steep raked stands
- stands close to pitch

Hearts understood this 20 years ago when they built the 3 new stands and their new Main Stand will round things off nicely...

Ferencvaros is a cracking stadium too

As the long term users of the new ground, we need to demand a say on the design - dont we have representation on the board??

[stansmith]

As the long term users of the new ground, we need to demand a say on the design - dont we have representation on the board??

Too late. We're getting what's been submitted.

[stansmith]

The point everyone is missing is this isn't for the wider good.

We'll be left with a cheap stadium no one really likes in a hated location, spending £50m to do so.

And Stewart Milne's long held personal desire for an out of town stadium isn't what 'the club' thinks is best and it's the sole reason we are in the absent training facilities and run down stadium situation just now.

[notinmyname]

The point everyone is missing is this isn't for the wider good.

We'll be left with a cheap stadium no one really likes in a hated location, spending £50m to do so.

...i'm open to persuasion but it appears to me (perhaps wrongly - please build a puissant rebuttal as I am always happy to hear a point of view that might change mine [obstinence is the enemy of growth etc]) that the debate has been rehearsed widely and various flaws have been made obvious to all but the most entrenched? I believe we need to emphasis the positives of a new gaff i.e. Having a stadium next to a major new infrastructure development designed to eliviate aberdeens chronic traffic issues (given 60% drive to football) and therefore i am inclined to think might be a good thing?

I'm trying not to inject a arbitrary / personal preference into this but i disinclined to believe that various parties are colluding (uefa down) to perpetuate a 20 year project to build a stadium just to piss off a few people that have walked to pittodrie their whole lives.... its not personal - its economics / demographics. Soz

[fatshaft]

The point everyone is missing is this isn't for the wider good.

We'll be left with a cheap stadium no one really likes in a hated location, spending £50m to do so.

Delighted with the location.