You cannot tell me that this wouldn't make Oakwell fit for the future

I thought we were talking about their attendances

 

Sorry ST... my fault, I was getting carried away with my completely irrational rant about Donny!!

 

I blocked the toilet with my green and yellow poker dot boxers when I farted and followed through v Burnley in the cup. I got that excited when Rose scored to put us through.

 

If the West Stand has 10 years ish left, then whatever design plans are put forward, need to be done nearer the time - to ensure it’s modern and fit for our requirements.

I think it will have to have some degree of hospitality in it as well - most boxes and executive areas are sold for most games each season.

 

one of Bradford stands cantilever's over a pavement.

 

They might though. Not all of them, granted. But still.

Say, for every ten curious newbies that attend, we could gain one or two regular’s, maybe more, who catch the bug and keep coming.

If you can attract someone to come once, which is easier with a facility that isn’t a crumbling, decrepit embarrassment, there is always the chance they get gripped.

 

Isn’t it the height that is the restriction? Blocking light to the houses on Grove street?

 

I was under the impression that’s why the East is so high, it couldn’t go further back due to a large diameter main so had to go up, might be wrong like.

 

I agree to an extent, but the Donny Lego stadium cost £20m (£30m odd for the whole complex) in 2008, at a complete guess I would reckon to build just a stand would now be between £5 & 10m, possibly more if it were to incorporate facilities intended to generate money, I just don't see that investment being recouped in new ST holders (outside a PL promotion).
Having said all that serious cash will need to be spent at some time on the West Stand.

 

When i started going as a kid in the 60's, i never once thought about the facilities. Now is a great time to get kids along, we've got a winning team and that's what will make them want to come back. I'm totally for a better west stand and facilities by the way.

 

The thing is, and I mean this with all respect, it's not the 1960s anymore. People do care about facilities. There have been countless studies done which show that facilities matter and the way people engage with football has changed and matters more and more.

To put this another way, in the 1960s I'm guessing if you bought a TV you didn't really care about it's features. It showed the 3 channels available and that's all that mattered right? That's because pretty much all TVs in the 1960s had those same few features, they were all a pretty poor quality and all only did the bare minimum.
Now TVs have netflix built in, Amazon prime built in, internet built in, YouTube built in etc etc. The majority of people wouldn't buy one without any of those features and when buying a TV you'd look at what features are on it and choose the best one.

You also have to remember that there is so much more to do now than there was 60 years ago. We have to compete with the world at people's fingertips.

 

I think there's some potential to increase the capacity slightly. Obviously we've only got around 18,000 seats available at the minute, but I remember us filling/ coming to filling the 23,000 capacity in the late 00s. If we made it to the prem I'm sure we'd fill it - this seems unlikely now but hopefully will happen some point!

We've got to aim high - as somebody mentioned earlier, think about Brighton, Hull and co. Obviously they're larger towns but I like the idea that the stadium reflects the ambitions of the club. It also feels to me that lower league football is gaining in popularity. We don't want to build too small now and limit ourselves 20 years down the line!

The ideal development for me would be a new stand with a distinctive look - maybe a gable roof with the same triangular shape with Barnsley Football Club on it. Hopefully a little taller, with a modest capacity increase of a thousand or two, bringing us up to 24-25. Corporate facilities in there for that matchday revenue. A functioning set of facilities so that we can actually sell food and drinks on matchdays (this needs fixing in every stand mind). New changing rooms so the players can come out down the middle of the stand again. Good disabled access, with seats across the stand. Dedicated spaces for journos and a spot for a TV studio - that can only encourage Sky to pick us for games! Maybe include some of the kids facilities from that student's proposal earlier in this thread - make it the new family stand, with compelling reasons to take kids.

In short - if the money is there I think it could make a huge difference to the club.

Side note - if I took over with Bezos money I'd do a few other things. I'd buy up the brewery land to create a new vehicle access so that we can walk up that way again. Maybe add another car park down there too. I'd buy the school site for a new box office building/ club shop, and make the current box office/ Redferns into a bar with a permanent fan zone inside and outside. I'd put up a bigger score board.

 

Much as I love the old west stand I have to admit that it’s well beyond its usefulness in the modern world. The rest of the ground is good enough and for the number of times we fill the ground, the capacity is adequate. Comfort and safety are the new requirements and although I hear talk of us being a premier league club, I don’t think we are, or have ambitions to be. The other factor to take into account is the technology and I’m sure that before long we will have TV season tickets. I know that watching on TV is a different experience, but many Barnsley fans live a long way from the ground and don’t want to travel. I am a case in point, although age plays a part in that.

 

Having a fanzone where our box office and club shop currently are would be so unappealing to visit. A lack of natural light and quite cramped.

 

The West Stand should be completely demolished to make way for a single tier stand with state of the art media & corporate facilities, if it slightly reduces capacity then so be it. There’s nothing more depressing than seeing a stadium barely full which has been the case for a couple of decades now. If we need to increase capacity then that’s easy, we offer less tickets to away fans & segregate the north stand. Cost of stewarding & policing shouldn’t come into it if demand is there, because it would probably mean we are going through a successful period.

 

I was thinking it'd be outside the box office too, with the inside space available to make it useable for the whole season. Don't see why it couldn't me made appealing!

Maybe a new building on the school site would be better.

 

I'm no expert but I don't think splitting a stand in half increases capacity

 

Kids (and people in general) have different values and priorities now than they did in the sixties. Comfort and quality of facilities is a big consideration.

There are also many many choices of what to do with your Saturday afternoons, back then, probably not so much.

If we want to attract more young people we need to have a more modern offering. It doesn’t need to be spectacular - just not what we have.

I look at the regular faces in the east stand concourse, there’s plenty of young ‘uns but we seem to have a much higher proportion of older fans than a lot of clubs. That is certainly also the case in the west upper. They won’t last forever - we need to bring in the younger ones now.

 

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