Re: Stadium Redevelopment : Thu Oct 05, 2017 6:21 pm  

The Ghost of '99 wrote:

Firstly Carnegie didn't build Leeds a stand, as you misleadingly imply in your attempt to pretend that the club hasn't spent money on the stadium - Leeds built that stand out of their own funds. The Carnegie sponsorship and use of the facility made the sums add up even more but they didn't provide the initial cash to build it, that came from Leeds own reserves, bloated at the time by the sale of the cricket ground.


Secondly, your argument would have more merit if it didn't ignore the fact that the very first piece of stadium improvement the club made after Hetherington's arrival was the complete refit of the South Stand in 1999 when £1m was spent fitting the brand new roof (unlike other old stands at other old grounds it never leaked after that) provided the TV gantry and studio and refitted the bars and toilets with modern facilities. There were no river caves at Headingley.


But it is a ridiculous position to suggest that a club which generated in the late '90s around £7m a year of turnover, had a bit of historic debt and was just starting to be borderline profitable should have launched into a £20m wholesale rebuild of the ground straightaway. Initially the whole focus was on stabilising the business and to Leeds that meant securing both the test cricket and Yorkshire's future at the ground. So the company spent a lot of money on that side of the stadium which had the added bonus of further extending the corporate space for RL games.


And then, yes, the big investment in the Carnegie Stand which you so casually dismiss. A huge, huge development in the history of the stadium. And one which was possible by classic Hetherington/Caddick nous: first ensuring YCCC stayed at the ground, then ensuring it retained test match status by redevloping the East Stand and old West terrace, then once that was done selling it to the cricket club for £13m or whatever it was.


Anyway as it stands Leeds have spent more than any club other than Saints and Warrington on ground improvements in the Hetherington era. And will blow both of those out of the water in the next 12 months. It's not been easy or swift - but that's because the club chose to redevelop their existing ground and no external party be it supermarket or council or club owner was willing to pay for it - so it's 100% self funded, unique in British RL. Thanks Hetherington.

Stop talking sense Ghost, it's not wanted by the Rhinos Bashers Club. Please concentrate your replies on the "wooden seats" debacle!

Re: Stadium Redevelopment : Mon Oct 09, 2017 10:38 pm  

Here's the outline of the proposed temporary North Stand (red) with the existing stand (blue) and the replacement stand (grey). Looks a rinky-dink affair.

This view also shows the effects of the large loss of capacity on the RL side in the final scheme, a very disappointing outcome for the amount of money being spent. Our stadium actually gets smaller with a capacity post-rebuild of less than 20,000. This is all being lost on the North Stand side, as seen here, where the central core of the building and its huge banqueting suite takes out around 2,000 of the seats in the existing stand. I also worry that it will be a rather windswept place to sit compared to the existing place.

Compared to the cricket side which as the planning docs suggest is intended to be individual in character our side is by design supposed to be altogether more perfunctory in nature.



Given that it is common for redeveloped and new stadia to drive increases in attendance it's of concern that the club has had to settle for a smaller ground as part of a trade-off with the needs of the corporate and cricket sides. There is literally nowhere else to grow the ground after this - if we thought getting planning for this scheme was convoluted I'd like to see what happened if the club put forward a scheme for the Western Terrace.

Re: Stadium Redevelopment : Tue Oct 10, 2017 8:16 am  

The Ghost of '99 wrote:

Here's the outline of the proposed temporary North Stand (red) with the existing stand (blue) and the replacement stand (grey). Looks a rinky-dink affair.

This view also shows the effects of the large loss of capacity on the RL side in the final scheme, a very disappointing outcome for the amount of money being spent. Our stadium actually gets smaller with a capacity post-rebuild of less than 20,000. This is all being lost on the North Stand side, as seen here, where the central core of the building and its huge banqueting suite takes out around 2,000 of the seats in the existing stand. I also worry that it will be a rather windswept place to sit compared to the existing place.

Compared to the cricket side which as the planning docs suggest is intended to be individual in character our side is by design supposed to be altogether more perfunctory in nature.



Given that it is common for redeveloped and new stadia to drive increases in attendance it's of concern that the club has had to settle for a smaller ground as part of a trade-off with the needs of the corporate and cricket sides. There is literally nowhere else to grow the ground after this - if we thought getting planning for this scheme was convoluted I'd like to see what happened if the club put forward a scheme for the Western Terrace.

Very interesting, on balance it looks like it favours the corporate, prawn /smoked salmon brigade . I have lost track over the years with regards to the twists and turns of the ground ownership and links between the cricket and rugby sections. I remember years ago talk about the cricket moving to a greenfield site , durkar?. Obviously that would have given us free rein to develop the north stand purely for rugby purposes.
Seem also to remember a school of thought to sell off the whole lot and move the rugby side to a new ground. As before the western terrace is the fly in the ointment regarding completing the ground development.

Re: Stadium Redevelopment : Tue Oct 10, 2017 8:34 am  

Reduced capacity after redevelopment not good

Re: Stadium Redevelopment : Tue Oct 10, 2017 8:52 am  

Homer Simpson wrote:

Reduced capacity after redevelopment not good

Agreed, however on the other side of the coin ,potentially more income from the corporate brigade. The transformation from the dark days of the back end of last season to last Saturday is remarkable. Add in the new ground developments plus the potential of young players like walker and Golding the future is starting to look extremely promising.

Re: Stadium Redevelopment : Tue Oct 10, 2017 9:06 am  

Homer Simpson wrote:

Reduced capacity after redevelopment not good

20,000 is more than adequate for the needs of the Rhinos.
We need to get attendances up around that mark after the redevelopment when we'll have a stadium to be proud of.
Reduced seating in the North stand offset by seats in the South Stand.

[Ex-Swarcliffe Rhino]

Re: Stadium Redevelopment : Tue Oct 10, 2017 9:14 am  

Old Feller wrote:

20,000 is more than adequate for the needs of the Rhinos.
We need to get attendances up around that mark after the redevelopment when we'll have a stadium to be proud of.
Reduced seating in the North stand offset by seats in the South Stand.

A pertinent point.

Re: Stadium Redevelopment : Tue Oct 10, 2017 11:57 am  

Anyone have the stats for seated capacity before/after?... I guess that is increasing?
Corporate increase goes without saying.

Re: Stadium Redevelopment : Tue Oct 10, 2017 1:16 pm  

There's probably minimal scope to increase the ground's capacity to be honest. Planning applications in Headingley are always scrutinised more closely than other parts of the city, and that's certainly the case with a project of this nature. The club doesn't have the friendliest neighbours in the world, traffic and parking are already issues in Headingley on matchdays, and so anything that could increase that is going to come up against challenges.

With that in mind, the club only has two options if it wants to increase ticket revenue. It can either increase ticket prices (not popular) or you can increase the number of premium tickets that you can sell (which reduces capacity on the same site footprint, but increases revenue per ticket). I think in truth, the club is right to do the latter.

Re: Stadium Redevelopment : Tue Oct 10, 2017 1:42 pm  

I agree to an extent but there would definitely have been scope for a more ambitious stand on the rugby side-the proposed one is quite a simple, single tier structure (ignoring the obvious complexities of the back to back roof structures) with the back of the multiple tiered cricket side towering above it like it did in the 1920s north stand.

Clearly this would have cost more money but then I do find it hard to believe we are spending £10m or so on our share of a north stand scheme which achieves a capacity on our side of less than 4,000. That £10m is not far off the total build price of Saints and Warrington's stadia.