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http://norwichcity.myfootballwriter.com/2019/06/21/with-the-carra-about-to-burst-at-the-seams-whats-the-answer-is-there-an-answer/

 

I know we’ve had some previous conversations on expanding the ground, but is it time to consider moving to a new ground to move forward?

 

With demand high and to attract the best players should we not think about a state of the art ground to go alongside our Cat 1 status and great training ground?

 

I know the old school don’t like it but what about the modern generation? Would a be 38k stadium be something you’d like to see?

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TBH I like that the ground is in the centre of the city. So for me I hope it stays where it is.

The city then has a buzz rather than out of town where the surroundings are soleless. We have all been to grounds where that is the case and it is pretty uninspiring.

With only one sporting arena in the city it would be a major loss of atmosphere, if a cricket ground, rugby stadium or an arena was in the city then you could argue for it. But for me relocation is not needed.

The Jarrold stand has been built with the option of possible expansion with an upper tier if I remember. But happy with CR at the moment.

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The article states: "I'm thinking 30kish"
So, all that expense for another 3k supporters ? Hardly worth it.
The Watling stand could be rebuilt to a larger one and the South stand was built with a view to adding a 2nd tier.

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Stay where we are and rebuild the City stand. There is no transport infrastructure to move it out of the city to a desolate wasteland where there are no pubs,restaurants etc to provide for 30,000 plus fans.

Edited by TIL 1010
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Theres enough scale on the present site to increase capacity....a larger one tier or 2 tier city stand...the corner infill where the hotel is....the jarrold stand expansion(which admittedly i've never seen plans for)....those 3 improvements could take us to 36-38k....which would be more than enough

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An ambitious owner could build a leisure facility at the show ground giving the club a state of the art stadium and surrounding facilities that would generate income for the club eg dry ski slopes, spa, leisure pools etc etc

we would need a rich owner with ambition for us to move to the next level. It isn’t going to happen 

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Good stuff.

I am inclined to think that if the cost of upgrading Carrow Road is prohibitive then a completely new ground, whatever the proposed "complex" and shared nature of the development, would be totally out of the question for the club.

Comparing anything to the Spurs development is totally unrealistic. That reportedly cost a billion pounds after all. Tottenham has London prices and Spurs are guaranteed Premier League existence forever.

I disagree that the hotel is the bigger problem. Sure we could do without it, but doing something about the ageing and 'dinky toy' main stand should be top of the list of priorities.

 

The points about the changing face of football and football grounds and the fact that delay in decision making results in rising costs should be taken on board.

A decent rule for successful businesses is to expand when the going is good, otherwise you stand still and others, better equipped to face the potential of the future, overtake you. Speculate to accumulate, as they say.

Nobody ever knows what the future will bring, but they still built the railroads to excess in Victorian Times because they new nothing of the motor car and the upheaval and cost of that extra runway at Heathrow is still planned even though lessons learnt from space travel could transform the nature of air travel within a few decades.

In sum, question: Why climb Everest?  Answer: Because it's there.

Question: Why build a new main stand. Answer: Because it's there (or could be.)

 

Edited by BroadstairsR
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I've just bought a Carrow Road T-Shirt in the club's Ebay flash sale (thanks Branston), so it's a definite NO from me.

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3 minutes ago, Jobsworth Canary said:

An ambitious owner could build a leisure facility at the show ground giving the club a state of the art stadium and surrounding facilities that would generate income for the club eg dry ski slopes, spa, leisure pools etc etc

we would need a rich owner with ambition for us to move to the next level. It isn’t going to happen 

Somebody from China maybe? 

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Nope. 

 

Stay on course as we are, wait until we sell one of our young players for 30m plus and use that to build over the City stand. The bubble isn't going to burst anytime soon and transfer fees are going to keep on inflating, soon 30m for a new stand won't seem that extravagant. It would require us to spend a few years in the PL and to keep unearthing young talent but I'm confident we can do it. It's better than taking out a loan or gambling with TV money.

There's no need to move anyway. We'd rarely sell above 35k and it's not worth relocating for an extra 5-7000 seats. I think around 32-34k would be a sweet spot for us and enough to sustain us at the top level.

Edited by Christoph Stiepermann
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14 minutes ago, Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man said:

I echo the sentiments of the above posters. It's more cost effective to just redevelop the City Stand with an extra 5-6,000 seats. The only problem (aside from the cost) is the disruption while it's being constructed, as it isn't a job that can be done over the summer.

Maybe.....or could an upper tier be built above the city stand without distruption in a similar way to Liverpool and their main stand??

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Prices go up for sure, but so do construction techniques.

Old Trafford Cricket ground erects a temporary stand just for Test Matches these days.

It holds upwards of 8, 000.

They always built a complete complex of stands just for the Open Golf Championship when it comes to Sandwich up the road from me.

I'm not sure about the relevance of these facts to the current debate, but perhaps somebody in the construction business could find some.

Edited by BroadstairsR

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7 minutes ago, GJL Mid-Norfolk Canary said:

Maybe.....or could an upper tier be built above the city stand without distruption in a similar way to Liverpool and their main stand??

I was actually thinking about Liverpool while posting that, but there was a little bit of disruption, I believe. The project overran and they had to start a season with three away games. 

Building a second tier and negotiating the existing roof seems to be the biggest problem. Would it be possible to build a second tier completely separate from the existing stand, and then over the summer we could rip off the roof and somehow connect the existing lower tier with the new upper? Or would we have to remove the roof earlier than this, which would mean a season with a roofless City Stand? 

I know nothing about construction or engineering, but I'm sure a specialist in these areas could easily think of a solution to add 6,000 seats for £30m whilst not losing any existing seats during the construction process.

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15 minutes ago, GJL Mid-Norfolk Canary said:

Maybe.....or could an upper tier be built above the city stand without distruption in a similar way to Liverpool and their main stand??

Absolutely do-able, Liverpool did it as said and Leicester Tigers Rugby Club did something very similar a few years back which would be the way to go. They built the new stand behind the existing (we would have to build over the old Carrow Road), constructing the new upper tier and roof keeping the low level existing in use. Over the close season the lower tier was rebuilt. With some off site prefabrication and sensible phasing the disruption can be minimised.

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Adding a tier to the south stand is a non starter. I remember that being stated during the mcnally era. I don’t understand construction but it was stated that the south stand wasn’t built in a way to allow it to be added to.

Really as has been said over and over here, it’s all about the redevelopment of the city stand. It needs it, we need it. 

We have a fantastic opportunity right now to stamp down a place as a really decent premier league club and this is part of it.

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7 minutes ago, SwindonCanary said:

Stay at Carrow Road, but improve it. Look what they have done at Bristol City it's improved beyond recognition.

When i went last season i thought what a magnificent improvement has been made in recent years but then again they have a rich owner.

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There's a  story about that, there rich owner wanted to build a new ground, but the place he picked was used by dog walkers ! It was refused again and again, So Lansdown decided to improve the ground instead.

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Carrow Road could quite easily be expanded to reach 35k capacity, and potentially even 40k if we were to get rid of that awful hotel.

There's already been plans drafted up for second tier on the City Stand (which we all know about), and there's also plans for a second tier on the Jarrold I believe (however unless we were a solid top half Prem side with multi-millionaire owners, I can't ever see us adding another tier to the Jarrold).

Personally, I don't think we need to expand the ground any time soon, especially considering the cost to the club and the obvious savings that would need to be made elsewhere. And I know we almost sell out every game, but something tells me we'd struggle to fill an extra 5k+ seats. 

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19 minutes ago, Hoolahoop14 said:

Personally, I don't think we need to expand the ground any time soon, especially considering the cost to the club and the obvious savings that would need to be made elsewhere. And I know we almost sell out every game, but something tells me we'd struggle to fill an extra 5k+ seats. 

The cost has been quoted at £20-30m I think, and with Premier League riches there is no better time to do it, especially with such saleable assets in the first team squad right now. We probably have four players that could fund a new stand on their own, and these players will all be sold on within the next few years when they outgrow us so it makes sense to invest some of this windfall on something we'll see the benefits of for generations to come. We may be slightly less competitive on the pitch for a season or two by not reinvesting all available funds in the playing squad, but the stand will last 50 years.

Will we fill it? I think so. The population of Norwich has been growing slowly but steadily over the last few decades and it will probably continue to do so. Therefore it stands to reason that as the population of the area increases slightly, demand for tickets will slightly increase too, and what better time to take advantage than now, when we're in the Premier League and our main rivals are languishing in the third tier? Prospective 'new' fans, whether they're youngsters or they've moved to the area, who are in between Norwich and Ipswich are likely to choose us, but if they can't get tickets it's a problem.

Also, think of the new generation. With such limited casual tickets available, it's hard for kids to be able to tag along with their parents. Even if we offer some of the new seats at reduced prices for youngsters, we may make a slight loss on tickets but we'll be still be selling plenty of merchandise to a new generation of fans which will set us up for years to come. 

Furthermore, other clubs of our size are redeveloping their grounds or building new ones, and as a result we risk being left behind if we don't expand as we'll end up with a ground that's smaller and less modern than the other yo-yo clubs, which will risk us falling behind them.

In conclusion, not expanding the ground now because it's too expensive is a shortsighted view that will not do us any favours in the long run.

Edited by Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man
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1 hour ago, GJL Mid-Norfolk Canary said:

Maybe.....or could an upper tier be built above the city stand without distruption in a similar way to Liverpool and their main stand??

Liverpool FC started buying properties around Anfield in the 1990s, then left them empty, turning the neighbourhood into a problem area, which in turn persuaded other residents to move out. They continued to purchase properties in the area during the 12 year consultation period over the proposed new ground. When they shelved their plans to build a new stadium and looked to expand Anfield instead, Liverpool City Council started buying the remaining properties, using the threat of compulsory purchase orders to keep the prices low in an area that had fallen into decline.

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3 minutes ago, Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man said:

The cost has been quoted at £20-30m I think, and with Premier League riches there is no better time to do it, especially with such saleable assets in the first team squad right. We probably have four players that could fund a new stand on their own, and these players will all be sold on within the next few years when they outgrow us so it makes sense to invest some of this windfall on something we'll see the benefits of for generations to come. We may be slightly less competitive on the pitch for a season or two by not reinvesting all available funds in the playing squad, but the stand will last 50 years.

Will we fill it? I think so. The population of Norwich has been growing slowly but steadily over the last few decades and it will probably continue to do so. Therefore it stands to reason that as the population of the area increases slightly, demand for tickets will slightly increase too, and what better time to take advantage than now, when we're in the Premier League and our main rivals are languishing in the third tier? Prospective 'new' fans, whether they're youngsters or they've moved to the area, who are in between Norwich and Ipswich are likely to choose us, but if they can't get tickets it's a problem.

Also, think of the new generation. With such limited casual tickets available, it's hard for kids to be able to tag along with their parents. Even if we offer some of the new seats at reduced prices for youngsters, we may make a slight loss on tickets but we'll be still be selling plenty of merchandise to a new generation of fans which will set us up for years to come. 

Wonder which player will go down in history to be forever synonomous in their sale funding the new imoroved City Stand??.....to go along with , The Kevin Reeves River End...the Robert Fleck Barclay Stand...the David Phillips undersoil heating....and the 'dubious heater left on overnight' current City Stand?!?

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27 minutes ago, Mr Angry said:

Liverpool FC started buying properties around Anfield in the 1990s, then left them empty, turning the neighbourhood into a problem area, which in turn persuaded other residents to move out. They continued to purchase properties in the area during the 12 year consultation period over the proposed new ground. When they shelved their plans to build a new stadium and looked to expand Anfield instead, Liverpool City Council started buying the remaining properties, using the threat of compulsory purchase orders to keep the prices low in an area that had fallen into decline.

This whole story is awful and yet another example of why Liverpool probably have the biggest claim to scummiest club in the land. They literally destroyed people's lives and communities to expand their stadium. Utterly scummy and shameful. 

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The Carrow Road location Is our home and, subject to the cost, relatively easy to expand to 35-40000 capacity. With the transport and entertainment  infrastructure currently in place it just wouldn’t make sense to relocate.

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2 hours ago, BroadstairsR said:

A decent rule for successful businesses is to expand when the going is good, otherwise you stand still and others, better equipped to face the potential of the future, overtake you. Speculate to accumulate, as they say.

The problem with that is that, other than a handful of the top clubs who will attract “glory supporters”, the majority of the teams in England (and everywhere else) have a fairly limited target market. If an up and coming tech company splashes millions to keep progressing, chances are there are a few million potential customers it could “poach” from competitors. If we built a sixty thousand seater on the outskirts of the city, it would be half empty the majority of the time and be a massive waste of money (which could have been invested in players).

C.5000 extra seats seems sensible, 10k at a push. The City stand needs revamping, whether that’s adding an extra tier somehow or more of a complete overhaul. I’d rather us knock the City stand down and build a new one than completely relocate.

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2 hours ago, Mr Angry said:

Liverpool FC started buying properties around Anfield in the 1990s, then left them empty, turning the neighbourhood into a problem area, which in turn persuaded other residents to move out. They continued to purchase properties in the area during the 12 year consultation period over the proposed new ground. When they shelved their plans to build a new stadium and looked to expand Anfield instead, Liverpool City Council started buying the remaining properties, using the threat of compulsory purchase orders to keep the prices low in an area that had fallen into decline.

Didn’t know this, what a sneaky bunch, forcing the local people out and making their house prices tumble - that’s awful! 

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