Todays Programme

[clippedgull]

First programme I have bought since the Goldstone

Not a bad read either.

What did everyone who purchased one think of the Falmer section?

 

[dougdeep]

First one I'd bought for 2 seasons. Not bad I suppose.

 

[Fred Oliver - Legend]

First one I'd bought for 2 seasons. Not bad I suppose.

why?? getting a programes a must for me every game, does the money go to the club or is it run independtly(sp)?

 

[7:18]

can someone please summarize the Falmer section for me and maybe we could even have a few more of those nice pictures scanned?

Cheers

 

[dougdeep]

why?? getting a programes a must for me every game, does the money go to the club or is it run independtly(sp)?

I used to buy one every game, but then I thought £90 could be better spent.

 

[Buzzer]

Twas good - except for Barry f***ing Hearn "empathising" with the Albion plight.

Strange. I seem to remember him voting to kick us out the league and was bloody miffed that the interviewer didn't pick him up on this and ask how he reconciled that with his conscience. The cocknosher.

 

[Freddie Goodwin.]

I also bought my 1st one for years, in order to read more about Falmer.

Pretty good effort but there's so much to tackle. Some of the floor plans, obviously re-produced, meant that the writting was microscopic. i'd like more details on each stand, capacity etc and things like where they expect the away & family sections to be/

As for the programme itself, seemed to lack a bit of the 'personal' touch of a few years back. I haven't had the chance to read it all yet but I always used to look for Roy C's very interesting articles.

Has the print got smaller or am I was getting older. Oh, and where is that very special smell that programmes have? Not meaning to be pervy but, the smell of a new programme was something special and used to take me back in time, ahhhh!!

 

[Giraffe]

Twas good - except for Barry f***ing Hearn "empathising" with the Albion plight.

Strange. I seem to remember him voting to kick us out the league and was bloody miffed that the interviewer didn't pick him up on this and ask how he reconciled that with his conscience. The cocknosher.

Exactly what I just thought when reading through. The guy is a publicity seeking tosser.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

can someone please summarize the Falmer section for me and maybe we could even have a few more of those nice pictures scanned?

Cheers

No pictures, but this is some of the the text ...


Masterplan

This plan shows what the Falmer area will look like in August 2010, with coloured areas representing different building work due to take place in the next two and a half years, including several improvements to the transport infrastructure in the immediate local area.

Falmer Station will have greater access from the universities and Falmer High School, with two new bridges being built linking the three together. A new flyover and junction will be constructed on the A270 while an improved signal controlled junction between the B2123 and the widened Village Way will be constructed. There will also be a new slip road from the A270 linking it to Sussex University.

The yellow areas to the north of the stadium, in the University of Sussex campus will be used as car parks on matchday, while there will also be parking at Falmer High School on matchdays, with the improved foot and cycle path (marked in yellow) linking the school and the stadium/station.

The graphic also shows which proportion of the site upon which the new stadium will be built is owned by the university, and that which is owned by Brighton & Hove City Council.

Martin Perry

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Take your breath away

This image is accurate. Specialist software was used to turn detailed drawings by stadium architects KSS into a 3D image, allowing the project team to view the stadium from various angles and select an ideal vantage point. This 'view' was sent to specialist design company T2 Design Solutions who brought the image to life before painstakingly adding seats, goals, spectators and players. The inset images on the left show the illustration in its interim stages.

Two of the most frequently asked questions about the new stadium have been: When will it be ready? and Where is the money coming from?. The first is an easy one to answer, the second less so - although those closest to the project know the answer intimately.

TIMING

The main contractor will be appointed this summer. Work will begin by the end of the year and is expected to take just under two years. Martin Perry explained, "Now we are able to work to our own schedule we are moving along nicely and everything is going to plan. We expect to move in August 2010, but there will be warm-up events in July 2010 - community and fun events that will allow us to test our systems.

During construction there will be a web cam for supporters to track progress and opportunities to view the site and see the stadium taking shape.

"We will be holding 'hard hat days' for our season ticket holders who will be the first to be invited when the stadium is ready for viewing."

FUNDING

The club is now moving into an intensive period of negotiations with the banks and potential sponsors and for this reason the details of the business case cannot be put into the public domain.

The funding and - equally important - legal negotiations are going well. The club has appointed Pricewaterhouse Coopers, who assisted Arsenal with the funding for the Emirates Stadium, and Martin Perry told us he is "extremely confident that the club will secure all the necessary funding within the required time frame via a combination of bank borrowing, grants, investment and sponsorship. I’m sure there are going to be some exciting developments on the funding front in the next few months."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PLANS


Concourse areas
The concourse areas will include all the expected amenities. We want to encourage supporters to enjoy the facilities before and after the match, so this area will be vibrant and comfortable. There will be food, merchandise and betting kiosks, and the whole concourse area will be decorated with Albion imagery to ensure the matchday experience is as good as at any new stadium. There will be screens broadcasting matchday TV, giving supporters all the pre-match build up, highlights and interviews plus other live games and then, later, post-match interviews.

Club Shop & Museum
The club shop is where it is because our research shows up to 17,000 people would walk past it. An impressive museum is attached and once the stadium is open stadium tours will begin in the club shop and finish in the museum.

Storage
We are going to have up to 400 stewards and staff on a matchday, and we will need somewhere to house uniforms, jackets, radios and other equipment.

Hospitality areas
In Brighton and surrounding areas most businesses are small or medium sized. Research shows that they prefer tables of four or six to entertain guests – and the best way to do this is in large open-plan hospitality suites rather than in boxes, where you are closed off and can’t network with others. We learnt from the experiences at Hull , Coventry and Swansea (and the same format is being used by Cardiff) and will have five different-sized open-plan areas.

Boxes
While most of the hospitality is open-plan, creating a much more sociable and fun atmosphere, there will also be 14 ten-person boxes. And 20-person boxes can be created by removing partitions.

Directors lounge
This is the area the club’s directors will entertain the opposing team’s directors pre- and post-match.

Storage areas in hospitality
On a non-matchday the use of the hospitality areas can be varied. It could be buffet style for a reception, theatre-style for a presentation or silver service for a dining. To give us the flexibility to cope with these different demands, we need a variety of furniture and a lot of storage space to put it in.

Players’ area
This is at pitch level. The dressing rooms don’t have to have external windows or doors - it’s actually better that they don’t. Then there are the necessary warm-up rooms, a gym and treatment rooms meeting UEFA standards.

Referees' area
There are two referees' changing rooms (as we have at Withdean, believe it or not) in case we have a female official. The delegates' area is a UEFA requirement for officials who might visit for an international match.

Media area
The press facilities are to UEFA standard and include a media work area and various post-match interview areas for written press, TV and radio. There will also be camera points and gantry, plus a press box in the west stand.

Energy Centre
That houses boilers, cooling plant and water storage to serve the whole of the building. It’s located in the north stand, because that is where the incoming services come from. From there utlities are distributed around the stadium.

City College
The east stand and the building linked to the stadium by the glass tunnel will be used for educational purposes, with City College using this part of the complex for vocational courses. The whole Falmer area will create links between secondary education ( Falmer High School ), further education ( City College ) and higher education (the two universities). There is nothing else like it anywhere in the country.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My report on Tuesday's Falmer Roadshow

It was a race against time. Over a thousand people were congregating outside Hove Town Hall on Tuesday night in expectation of the unveiling of the latest plans for the Community Stadium at Falmer. Inside Hove’s Great Hall of the People, the Albion project team were hurrying to complete a major construction project. All those architects’ drawings needed to be pinned up by 7.30. And they’d run out of drawing pins!

Fortunately, a quick phone call saved the day. And the team were eventually able to relax, in the knowledge that they had completed the job that everyone was hoping for – on time and to budget. But just.

Time has not been a friend of the Albion over the seven years that have passed since the planning application for the stadium was first prepared. We have become used to delays. ‘Falmered-out’ is the phrase. However, as Paul Samrah reminded everyone in his introduction to Tuesday night’s presentation, “Together we have won”.

And we were now assembled in numbers to find out what exactly was the prize for winning this planning battle.

Dick Knight reminded us. We had won more than a stadium. This was going to be a place to enjoy. A place to learn. A place to work. And it was going to be stunning. In one word – WOW.

Martin Perry gave us the detail. More than a stadium – a new flyover and road junction on the A270; a new link road into Sussex University; a footpath and cyclepath; a footbridge over the railway; new emergency accesses; and the widening of Village Way.

Oh. And a stadium. A stadium that is well on the way, with a project team of 32 people already working to make it a reality by 2010. Architects, transport consultants, landscape experts, planners, environmental specialists, mechanical and electrical engineers, project managers, financial advisors, lawyers. And we’ll have the construction contractors appointed in the summer and work on site will start in the autumn.

It’s a big partnership that is working together – the city council, SEEDA, two universities, City College, Falmer High School, Network Rail, the train and bus companies, the Football Foundation, caterers, local community representatives.

Despite all this co-operation, there are still challenges ahead. We learned that there are another six planning hurdles to jump over. Martin Perry quietly reminded us that the fans have a role still to play in writing letters in support of the planning applications that will be submitted.

We already know about the application to extend our stay at Withdean until the new stadium is open. But there will be other applications as well. There is a ‘housekeeping’ scheme for Falmer to ensure that the final version of the stadium incorporates a variety of changes that have become necessary over the last few years, including greater educational use and top-quality accessibility for people with disabilities. Removing excess chalk to a newly landscaped neighbouring field, avoiding hundreds of truck movements during construction, will need planning approval, as will an updated scheme for widening the Stanmer Park access road. And there are plans for the Albion to have temporary office space next to the main stadium site and for the University of Brighton to have some temporary accommodation.

OK, Martin, we understand. Just tell us when to write our letters. But we hope you are right when you say that these six planning applications will be straightforward and non-controversial.

But what of the stadium itself? The visuals that were displayed at the roadshow were, indeed, stunning. So exciting, in fact, that the questions from fans in the second part of the evening were mostly queries about detail. We learned that there will be at least 16 lifts, that the acoustics will generate atmosphere, that there will be facilities for supporters and the Seagulls Club, that we’ll be able to watch construction from a viewing area or via a webcam, and that plans are in place to enable us to remember our departed loved ones. We also found out that we might even be allowed to hold marriage and civil partnership ceremonies there.

Quite sensibly, the club is still keeping the details about the finances for the stadium confidential. Questions were asked about the likely “size of the mortgage”, but commercial sensitivities keep the answer under wraps. PricewaterhouseCoopers are on board, however, as financial advisers. They helped Arsenal get the Emirates Stadium and worked on the Lansdowne Road project.

If our community stadium turns out to be as exciting as those two projects, Albion fans will be very happy. There’s still a lot of work to do and a lot of detail to be finalised. But the drawing pins have turned up. Yes! The stadium is on its way.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

EVENTS

There will be up to 46 major events at the stadium every year, including Albion's first-team games, and a number of smaller conference-style events housed in the hospitality area on a day-to-day basis. The planning regulations state the stadium can host one pop concert and one classical concert each year and two other major outdoor events.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

REGULATIONS, REGULATIONS

Once planning permission was finally granted by the Government last summer, the club's project team was quickly established in an office at Withdean Stadium, and one of their first tasks was to update the plans to take into account various changes to building processes, technology and new legislation over the decade which has passed since the original plans were made. The stadium now meets all the necessary criteria to comply with building and environmental regulations, and conforms to FIFA, UEFA, FA and Football League requirements, the Disability Discrimination Act and the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method.

 

[7:18]

thank you Lord Bracknell you have made my day! Great read an very promising, as an overseagull I really thank you very much for posting that!

I do really like the symbolism of all the energy coming from the North Stand and being distributed around the stadium!

 

[Scotty Mac]

why?? getting a programes a must for me every game, does the money go to the club or is it run independtly(sp)?

yes the money goes to the club - but buy one every game and that is around £90 a season - and with decent prices, that can get you entry to 9 away games....

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Here's a scan from the programme - looks pretty damned impressive aye?

 

[We're the Stripes]

Oh my, hadn't seen that.

 

[footychick]

How high is that third tier?

 

[Mrs Coach]

Are the programme writers on NSC?

 

[dougdeep]

Are the programme writers on NSC?

Ed Bassford might be.

 

[Robdinho]

That looks truely awesome! that one stand is bigger than the whole Withdean isn't it

 

[Mrs Coach]

Ed, are you involved every month? Or was this a one-off?

 

[Gully]

Wow.

 

[dougdeep]

Programmes still available at the club shop, get them while they're hot.