tom_widdows

This picture shows what they were replacing. Note the difference in height.

I think you may have misread the 3D image if you think any of the proposed houses are closer to the existing houses than the stadium. Either way before anyone can even consider building houses on the Pittodrie site they have to submit a detailed planning application (similar amount of information to the Kingsford stadium application). Planning permission in principle only means the council have said 'yes this area could be used for up to 350 houses. Also what point are you trying to make by posting Generic 3D visuals from an approved 'Planning permission in principle' application? Are you suggesting that the locals would rather have a football stadium on their doorstep as opposed to brand new housing and green spaces? If the club does relocated and Pittodrie is turned into houses the house prices in that area will jump and the residents won't have to put up with restricted parking on matchdays or the potential risk having 20000 people suddenly decend on your doorstep every second weekend. Anyway on the subject of daylighting problems with stadiums this is an example of when football clubs fail to take it into consideration and lose in court.

Strikers: Rooney 18 Stockley 6 Burns 1 Storey 1 Midfielders: McGinn 14 McLean 5 Hayes 8 Maddison 2 Pawlett 3 Christie 3 Jack 2 Defenders: Considine 7 Logan 4 O'Connor 2 Taylor 2 Shinnie 2 OGs 2

First casualty of the season. Rocket & Manc to follow come Sunday Evening? 85 83 82 81 - MBT 80 79 78 77 - Tyrant 76 75 74 - Nellie The Don (2nd Place Assured) 73 - BigAl 72 - Edinburghdon 71 - Oxford Don 70 69 68 - Thomsod (European Football Assured) 67 - Jute 66 - Manc 65 - rocket 64 63 - Tom_Widdows 62 61

Again you still haven't found one with a similar situation to pittodrie. Not a single stand at Windsor park backs onto a public road and all fan access and egress is from controlled zones around the stadium before entering public roads. The Windsor park redevelopment also had the advantage of the 3 redeveloped sides not being boxed in by domestic properties.

Brand New Stadium on unconstrained plot of land As opposed to existing stadium constrained by Housing, & Collector Roads. If you are going to continue with 'This is how I see the redeveloped pittodrie looking', may I suggest you search for examples of redeveloped stadiums in constrained environments.

Firhill North stand 1) Has two circulation routes. One at the Front between the seats and the advertisement boards One underneath the Seats accessed from within the stand by two Vomitories. 2) Both Circulation routes are accessed from a large open concourse between the stand and the turnstiles. This Space will act as a holding area in an emergency so evacuation can be controlled IE 2000 people are not immediately running onto Firhill Road blocking/ getting knocked down by Emergency vehicles. 3) Whilst the stand technically has only one entry point via Firhill Road (The Old Terrace was accessed from both Firhill Road & what is now known as Firhill Court) the open concourse also appears to provide access to circulation route along the front of the old Main stand. Fans could be directed this way should part of the concourse be required for Emergency vehicle parking. Heres the thing about Firhill's redevelopment 1) Only the Main stand is constrained by a Collector Road. Try to redevelop that and they will face the same problems the Dons will. 2) All other access around the stadium was for the stadium ie no houses, flats etc needed it. See point 1 3) Partick had a larger footprint behind their old Terrace as it was curved like Hampden. So large in fact they were able to build a stand and sell land to a developer to build 4 Blocks of Student flats whilst still maintaining the necessary shared access road around the 3 sides of the stadium. If you like I can tell you the reasons the opposite end of Firhill is not currently used.

And was paid for by Tesco It is also within a self contained site with no major roads running right behind the stands. Fans exiting the stadium do so into carpark and concourse areas Can everyone please understand that the moment the Main Stand & Merkland are demolished the requirement for controllable emergency concourses kicks in. Merkland Lane & Pittodrie Street are public 'collector' roads which can only be closed for maintenance or in emergency situations. This is why you risk getting run down when queuing to get in and when leaving. You cannot close these streets without providing an equal & approved alternative as you are affecting emergency/ service vehicle access for the surrounding residential & commercial businesses. This means the break out concourse will need to be contained within the footprint of both IE the entire capacity of the stand can be contained without anyone being forced to step onto the roads (perhaps even the pavement depending on where the site boundary is). The only way I can see this being achieved in the Main & Merkland is to (as Ten Caat has already said) move all admin/ changing rooms etc to the South. Raise the seating area up on stilts and put the turnstiles right at the front (as close to the pitch as possible) making it look similar to Hamilton's ground from the inside. Fans would walk underneath the stands, through the turnstiles then walk alongside the pitch and up sets of stairs. The circulation route between the turnstiles and the pitch would depend on the stand capacity. A 1000 seat stand requires a 5.3m wide route. A 2000 seat stand would require 10.6m and so on (5.3mm x capacity). Allowing for a cantilevered roof, support columns etc cuts the number of potential seating rows however it wouldn't matter how many seats you could install, you would only get a safety certificate for the amount of fans which can safely escape and be contained in an emergency. The redeveloped south stand has the problem of having to achieve a wide enough escape routes for fans + the additional width required for emergency vehicle access a the same time as a mass evacuation. Having to fit Admin offices, changing rooms, corporate facilities etc further complicates this. You would have more chance of getting more than 12000 seats if you actually removed the main stand completely thereby turning pittodrie into a 3 sided stadium, move the pitch closer to pittodrie street allowing the South stand footprint to be increased. This might actually allow a redeveloped south stand to be constructed higher than the existing depending on the distance between it and the flats behind. This then adds the complication of adapting/ extending the RDS. Can't build any higher than existing without objections from the neighbours If you fill in the corners how do emergency vehicles get onto the pitch? If you fill in the corners how would a mass evacuation from the pitch be achieved (The last resort for stadiums is fans escaping onto the pitch and out through the emergency vehicle access routes)? As above it doesnt matter how many seats or standing places you put in, you will only get a safety certificate for the number of people who can be safely evacuated and if necessary contained in a protected area.

34 games in which the attendance was more than 12000. Say if Pittodrie only had a 12000 capacity over the last 4 seasons the club would have missed out on revenue from approx 103,000 people @ say £21 per ticket = £2,163,000 in ticket money + merchandise + Food & Drink. Yeah lets reduce the capacity and say goodbye to that kind of income. Item 1 - Yes Item 2 - Replace it with what? its a Glazed barrier of at least 1100mm height constructed in compliance with BS EN 1991-1-1/PD 6688-1-1. Replacing it will not help the screwed up sight lines Only quickly skimmed the jambos board but I don't see anything that suggests an away fans boycott from one of Scotlands bigger clubs I point blank refuse to click on follow follow but given they failed to organise a serious boycott at tannadice over being charged to attend a rescheduled match I seriously doubt that horrible club would not pack out and as per usual, vandilise the away end in a new stadium. item 1 - Absolutely. Lets get a nice new fully enclosed stadium with equal sized stands. Item 2 - Really? I've been in what I thought was a great bounce in one stand (South or RDS). Then after the game I hear complaints from fans sat in other stands about lack of singing and atmosphere. Are all the people you attend games with stone cold sober? If they are I envy you. In previous seasons I've been on trains/ volunteered to drive mini-buses in which some of my group have failed to even make it to the match due to the alcohol intake either on the journey or in the pub before hand. Being able to buy a couple more pints inside the stadium will not suddenly turn every single fan into an Ultra. Some people sing, some people don't. A well design stadium with proper acoustics can help compensate for the latter. You are the one who brought up the ticket price issue. Until the club announce plans anything on this is pure speculation and to claim one side or the other in an argument is pointless. I'm not a psychic, structural engineer, or HSE Officer. I predict the moment will come when the price of keeping the stand open is more than the money the stand actually brings in. In the worst possible case the club lose all access to the Main Stand including offices, board room, Corporate boxes, changing rooms. Lose the facilities in the Main and the stadium could actually be shut down. Please refer to the start of this response Corporate can be anywhere but having it on your longest stands means more facilities No matter where you put it in a redeveloped pittodrie it will reduce the standard seating capacity. Remove it and the club loses a large chunk of revenue. Hearts suffer from their lack of corporate boxes and they have chosen not to put them in their new stand. May reduce construciton costs but it also reduces potential income. large scale sports stadiums are not the same as domestic houses. Go to Page 48 of this thread That document is a business strategy from almost a decade ago. It is not a feasibility study nor a detailed masterplan of the stadium and facilities There are also the advantages and disadvantages Advantages - Established destination for support - fair enough -Identified in Local Plan as an opportunity site for new stadium. - Local Plans change, Councils can re-zone land at any time, only stated as an 'opportunity'. Every large open site in the city of Aberdeen is an 'opportunity' until you make the first enquiry - Potential to act as a catalyst for community regeneration. - Potential is the key word in this one but why would a new stadium suddenly make Seaton a better place to live? Has the sports village suddenly made it more desirable? Disadvantages are: - - Constrained site – cannot accommodate Football Club’s requirements. - Little or no Community Use Opportunities - Greater risk in terms of ground conditions -Common Good question remains over land - Existing tenants will require compensation potentially making it unaffordable That's just the summary. Have a swatch at the SWOT analysis. Does anyone still want to push for the Kings Links site?

FYI 2015/16 - 38 Games 62 goals 2016/17 - 30 games 60 goals

Finished 1-1. Seemingly Motherwell were taking them to pieces and the Sevco keeper was taking them on by himself

Lets see now. A club in the 3rd largest city in Scotland which on several occasions a season can bring in crowds of 20000 even when they are losing should cut their capacity thereby reducing arguably their largest potential income stream I would love to seem them (or indeed any other business) approach potential sponsers/ funders with that business plan. If there was ever an example of Scottish lack of ambition. RDS The only 'modern' stand in the stadium but it was built before UEFA started their bullshit pitch size regulations. To allow for European matches to be played the pitch had to be lengthened which fucked up the sight lines from the Upper Tier so from certain seats you struggle to see the goal line. South Stand Im 6ft 4 and yet there is only one occasion I can remember seeing a player take a corner from the South stand/ RDS corner flag. That was the first ever 'away' spl match against Caley Thistle when I took the opportunity to watch the Dons from the away section. In my younger days I couldn't see about 1/4 of the pitch thanks to the segregation fences. It is also rapidly becoming a death trap (see my post about stadium design about 40 pages ago) Merkland Supporting pillars, shallow angle and as with the south stand if you sit in the front rows you get neck-ache having to look up due to the height of the pitch and the drainage profile. Circulation is not quite as bad as the South stand but it is still poor Main Front section is the only place you get a decent view but you also get very wet. Rear section - pillar central Designed for the days when wood & asbestos were the materials of choice and people were apparently max 5ft5. Only the RDL has the unrestricted views of a modern stadium. The small away supports are due to Pittodries facilities? Well having sat in the away section I can see why. 1/3 of it is uncovered, there is no windshield from the north Sea elements, the fence blocks your view of the south/ merkland corner flag and there are barely any catering facilities or enough toilets. There is also the 'Aberdeen is miles away' mentality. Perth is OK, Dundee at a push but that last 60miles? no chance What other teams forums are actually discussing the new Dons stadium any more than 'i see the sheep are trying to move'? Please provide links to these discussions as I am actually interested to see their thoughts and also the people saying they wont go because of having to use a shuttle bus. What is a myth? That trying to understand the PA announcements from the centre of the pitch is extremely difficult? That noise from one stand is barely audible from another due to the open nature of the ground? White Hart Lane (before they started dismantling it) springs to mind. Totally enclosed and steep angles having the fans pretty much on top of the players. The low roof with no open corners contained and circulated the noise and you didn't need a sell out crowd or everyone singing to build the atmosphere. Modern stadiums design includes acoustics, something which was not considered 115 years ago when the main stand was built, or when they bolted seats and quick roof over the south stand. So you are indeed correct. Staying at pittodrie will mean NOTHING changes No the answer is YOU have decided they wont. Where does it say the ticket prices will increase? How do you know that this ultra modern stadium wont allow the club to charge £22 per ticket which includes a free ticket on the shuttle bus. How do you know that the ticket prices may increase to say £25 but you get a 'free' snack & drink & shuttle bus ticket with it? A disaster will be when the Safety certificate for the Main Stand is revoked. A disaster will be when the Capacity of the South Stand is cut in order to obtain the safety certificate or eventually closing altogether when inadequte pre war foundations finally lose their battle with the sandy soil. Do you know how much it costs to underpin or even replace foundations? These are genuine threats and no matter how much money the club spends on maintenance there will come a time wont be able to get around the ever evolving health & safety regulations. Here's a case for moving stadium To redevelop pittodrie the following costs/losses will arise 1) No immediate capital from selling pittodrie to developers. 2) Loans taken out to pay for the re-building of 3 stands. The new stands will have to allow for future pitch expansion (UEFA did it once, they can easily do it again) modern emergency access, crowd circulation, toilet & catering facilties, corporate. The foundations for these new stands will be more expensive due to the sandy soil. The club will need to approach investors, funders, banks etc with a business model that shows they are cutting their potential income streams to do all this thereby making it harder for them to pay the loans off quickly. This does not give them a strong footing for getting a good deal. Nothing quite like a high interest long term loan to cripple you. 3) Losing one stand at a time means the lower capacity stadium starts immediately. If the South stand goes first the capacity immediately drops to 12000. Having to accommodate away fans means home support seats are cut even further. The new south stand will be significantly smaller (it cant be any taller than existing without potential legal challenges and it must comply with modern stadia regs) so lets say it ended up being 4000 seats. The next stand you lose is the Merkland and its replacement's capacity will be about half of the existing (about 1500). Then the Main stand goes and once again new stand will have a capacity about 50% of the existing possible even less if they try to maintain corporate facility levels. Lower fan potential = less ticket money, less potential merchandise sales, less money from catering, less money from pitch side sponsors= less playing budget and so on 4) Still got to build those training facilities somewhere Evidence of this please? And by evidence I mean an actual masterplan of the site which would allow a proper budget cost to be calculated and not just a figure picked out of the air by builder. All I have ever seen for this Kings Links stadium was a couple of artists impressions so if you have access to a fully master-planned scheme like the ones for Loriston or Kingsford please either post it here or PM me as I genuinely want to see it. Did that £42million allow for compensating/ relocating the Golf course/ driving range? Did it include the car-parking, road upgrades, flood defences (yes that's right), complicated ground preparation and foundation design, training facilites? I've heard builders say they could build a house for £120k only for this to almost double when the planning drawings are complete and then rise again once the Structural Engineer gets involved.

Bigger crowds - Who knows? Should the team suddenly win the league and go back to the days of Fergie them perhaps distance is no object. Knowing you wont get frostbite or soaking wet while straining to see past a fence, supporting pillar, or some random who wont sit down from a seat which is either bolted down to a former terrace or a plastic replacement for one first installed before the first world war and having the option to buy snacks & drinks prepared in modern facilities. Suddenly the £21-25.00 per ticket doesnt seem quite so bad. Bigger away crowds? - EH? Are you a Kilmarnock board member or one of Doncaster & Reagans cronies? AFCs priority is to their own fans and the business model is thankfully not based on getting 4 OF away crowds a season. I presume you are aware the club cut the OF allocations a couple of seasons back so they now get the same as everyone else. More Atmosphere Created/ more unwelcoming cauldron? - A purpose built fully enclosed arena as opposed to a mishmash of stands of different heights one of which isn't even fully covered. Yeah I can see why you are having trouble understanding this You want to find out about the acoustics of Pittodrie, take a trip into the middle of the pitch on a match day and try to see if you can understand to the PA announcements. You may think you are in a cauldron of noise in the RDS whilst your mate sat in the Main stand thinks its so quiet they can choose to listen to an arguing couple 6 rows behind them. Ticket Prices? - No one knows the answer to this. Supply and demand will have a factor as will club expenses. Anyone claiming the new stadium automatically equals more expensive tickets with the evidence currently available is scaremongering. Increasing maintenance costs for a wooden/ possibly asbestos ridden main stand and a sinking/cracking south stand on the other hand. Winning more at home? - Home teams generally win more often at home because bugger me if they don't play at their HOME stadium more than the AWAY team. However a shit home team on the other hand 17 years ago we finished bottom of the league and only won 10 of 23 competitive home games (only 6 league games) and lost 6-0 & 5-1 (twice) to everyone's favourite glasgow teams. Did anyone blame Pittodrie for that? Would it have happened in a modern stadium with modern training facilities? Maybes aye, Maybes naw. Is anyone suggesting Pittodrie is the main factor in this seasons home form? There is being negative and there is basically trolling. Coming on here and just laughing or slagging the clubs attempts to get a better stadium rather than pointing out actual alternatives falls into the latter. And don't re-start the broken record of 'pittodrie can easily be redeveloped to a modern 20000 capacity stadium' unless you can prove you work or have ever worked for the likes of Arup, Miller partnership, Herzog & De Meuron, Foster Associates or Populous. Do that and the floor shall be open for your presentation.

Getting in her before Manc (Glory hunter that I am) Strikers: Rooney 18 Stockley 6 Burns 1 Storey 1 Midfielders: McGinn 14 McLean 5 Hayes 8 Maddison 2 Pawlett 3 Christie 2 Jack 2 Defenders: Considine 7 Logan 4 O'Connor 2 Taylor 2 Shinnie 2

Looked like he wanted to cry at the final whistle. Nice Birthday present for himself

I'm sure John Halliday is desperately awaiting your application to join his team so you can show them how its done

Planners can blindly reject if they want but that would lead to an appeal by AFC. If the appeal went far enough the whole thing could be taken out of the Council's hands depending on the arguments. The Council will not want that as they lose a large chunk of their control (Take a quick look at what happened around Codona's Amusement Park) My opinion is as previously stated. HFM & AFC will continue negotiations with the Planners until enough details are submitted/ changes made to allow a conditional planning consent to be issued. Large chunk of the conditions will have 'no work may begin on site until <insert condition response> is agreed and approved in writing by ACC. Other Conditions will basically say 'you are not allowed to use certain materials, exceed approved noise levels at certain times and so on One the Planning stage is over there is still the little matter of Building Standards approval to negotiate which will cover a large chunk of the 'Technical' details people are crying out for. Of course Building standards drawings are not open to the public so anyone wanting to see them would need to wait until they have been approved and then make an appointment with the council.

I thought the arguments were about car-parking and bus services. Two things that have always been bones of contention in Aberdeen.

Section 75 up here is the same thing. My experience of it in Glasgow has always been with residential conversions of Listed Buildings in which there is no scope for providing a garden area for the future residents. As to whether the Section 75 payments are actually used to fund the public amenity/ green spaces it is supposed to.....

Off the ball mentioned the traffic issues and seemingly people were texting them about requesting a delay to the kick off but the officials at the game say there wasn't even a suggestion from the teams. The issues with the construction works on the major roads around Motherwell and Hamilton have been well documented for at least the last 6months (probably even longer) so anyone who was driving should have made allowances and planned to arrive in Motherwell much earlier. It may not be the nicest place in Scotland but sitting in a Starbucks or Costa beats sitting on the Raith Interchange. In saying that given the upper tier of the 'away' stand was closed it means the Arabs allocation was only 5,376 with St Mirrens being 5,873. Whether or not the upper tier was deliberately shut to make it a fair split St Mirrens allocation looked close to a sell out whilst there were big gaps in the United sections.

I feel the council planning are in a no win situation with this one. After the debacle of the newly elected council randomly reversing previously approved planning applications (including as I recall the training facility section at Loriston) and the mess that was Union Terrace gardens they will be under alot of pressure from the Press & Public to not be seen as denying the City something which many see as a positive move. However I sense approving the application will lead to legal challenges not too dis-similar to that used against the AWPR. I have only skimmed over the No Kingsford stadium FB group but for me it seems to fall into the trap so many people do when protesting something. Social media can be a powerful weapon when used correctly and I have seen groups like this before. There will be a hardcore few behind it but their online conduct will hinder them from getting people who are in the 'I don't want the <insert development here> built here but I have more pressing concerns in my life so I'm really not bothered' to really support them. Those are a key demographic when protesting anything. A few publicity shots in the press will not make up for the mess the objections turned into - Never ever get a standard letter, or tick-box list and get multiple people to sign it. It is too easy to be hi-jacked/ faked and will count against you. The same applies to those campaigning in favour. If you can get people to put their objections in their own words, the most powerful of which will still be the old fashioned formal letter then you will be taken more seriously. One letter signed on behalf of a group of people is better than the multiple copies of the same letter signed by different people I recently advised some people about how best to object to a new housing development. The development itself was not against any local plans and it was most likely going to be approved (council would have been hard pressed to reject it) so in that situation the key was not to get angry and demand it be rejected but to use local knowledge to highlight things the Developers/ Designers either may have ignored or had little to know chance of even knowing. The result was the application was approved but was hit with some seriously difficult & expensive conditions all of which would delay the project and potentially make it so expensive the developer may have to cancel it altogether. The locals were able to download a copy of the conditions along with the planning officers contact details so should the Developer try to cut any corners the alert would be raised sharpish and enforcement action taken. I will not be surprised if the decision is delayed well beyond the June 20th mark but I will be surprised if the Council issue an outright rejection. My money is on a few more months of negotiations followed by a conditional consent with a conditions list similar to what Tesco were hit with for their proposed Glasgow Harbour store (Now cancelled following their 'creative accounting' scandal).

I know its the 'diddy' cup final and its been given a shit kick-off time but I still think it is a sad sign that two of Scottish footballs reasonably big teams cannot muster up 13,742 fans between them. I went to the 2013 final with my QOS supporting mates and that was a sell out in both ends. Still don't understand why Fir Park is one of the preferred venues for this final. Good game so far - 1-1 (2 goals in the space of 1min)

http://www.thecanary.co/2017/03/24/no-one-wants-talk-scandal-dogging-comic-relief-done/

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