Olympic Stadium Discussion and Questions

[Swindon Iron]

Found this bit interesting from the minutes of the 29th July 2016 meeting, section 3 Directors update page 22 of 41:

"West Ham have held off releasing lower tier tickets but will now sell these to season ticket holders"

Seems very late in the day for such a comment to crop up about the "most successful migration ever", appreciate the info being presented at the meeting may have been a little bit old, but the fact that the last meeting before this one was the month before just strikes me as strange.

Could be another reason some long standing ST holders were not offered anything like comparable seating....

[Big George]

Sir Trev on 5 live last night (from about just after 8pm) pretty much putting it out there that the club are trying to move British Athletics to Birmingham after 2022 commonwealth games (although he thought it was 2021 in Coventry)

It will be tough because this would be in breach of the Olympic covenant that the LS would be a home for athletics

He talked openly about the need to move the pitch closer to the West side (what does that mean for those in the BB stand)

Lots of options but several just seem to be shifting problems not solving them.

[S-H]

Sir Trev on 5 live last night (from about just after 8pm) pretty much putting it out there that the club are trying to move British Athletics to Birmingham after 2022 commonwealth games (although he thought it was 2021 in Coventry)

It will be tough because this would be in breach of the Olympic covenant that the LS would be a home for athletics

He talked openly about the need to move the pitch closer to the West side (what does that mean for those in the BB stand)

Lots of options but several just seem to be shifting problems not solving them.

Trouble is, solving one problem will inevitably create others, unless real money is spent, and they start from scratch looking at improving the whole stadium seating arrangement, anything else will be a temporary fix, and most likely a cheap botched job.

[Bubbles Murray]

Moving the pitch closer to the West Side?!
Crikey. As S-H says due to the stadium being a non-football stadium any improvement in one area would inevitably mean making it worse in another.

[the pink palermo]

Moving it to the West stand is of course about keeping the Corporate dollar pouring in.

That was the whole point of the move so it should come as no surprise.

The corporate packages are up for renewal this season, so the timing of this isn't a surprise either.

[LincolnshireHammer]

How are they going to move the upper closer to the pitch?

[Whitters]

Admittedly the Stade de France is a hell of a lot better than the London Stadium in terms of being fit for Football but it is still far from ideal...

Amazingly, our lower tier is actually closer at some points...

The biggest difference is obviously the way they blend the lower and upper tiers. The ridiculous position of the giant screens cut off a large chunk of the upper tier in London and make that very difficult to do.

Here's a photo I took at an egg-chasing game I was at a few years ago - clearly, as you say, the OS is a lot closer:

[AlfieG]

I wonder how long it will be for people to realise that we are now homed in an athletics bowl, not a football stadium.?

Move the pitch towards the 'main' stand where the important people sit?? Outrageous!!

That would never happen at the Boleyn would it?

Same shyte, different stadium eh....

[Red Kens Slave]

It will be tough because this would be in breach of the Olympic covenant that the LS would be a home for athletics

There is no such covenant in existence.

[Big George]

There is no such covenant in existence.

Intresting, I thought the legal host document/agreement UK Govt/LOCOG signed guaranteed a long term future for athletics at LS?

Even if it doesn't, Coe's driving ambition was for a long term athletics centre of excellence in London.

Happy to be corrected on legal situation

[Red Kens Slave]

Intresting, I thought the legal host document/agreement UK Govt/LOCOG signed guaranteed a long term future for athletics at LS?

Even if it doesn't, Coe's driving ambition was for a long term athletics centre of excellence in London.

Not quite. In 2011, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport signed a letter of guarantee to the IAAF that there would be a track at the stadium suitable to host the 2017 World Athletics Championship.

There is no such guarantee that a track would/must remain forever/indefinitely.

Coe's ambition is an irrelevance at this stage.

[matthewbd]

It will be tough because this would be in breach of the Olympic covenant that the LS would be a home for athletics

.

What are the implications of this?

[Gsbgsb]

IF you were going to redevelop the ground keeping the West side is the most logical route. Expensive things like offices, corporate and changing rooms are all over that side. Yes you would lose a lot of capacity in the interim but you could then possibly redevelop the current BB to be both closer to the pitch and more of a traditional football stand presuming it is ever feasible to piecemeal redevelop the ground rather than taking down one bit leading to the roof collapsing and the whole thing falling down.

What you would do with the BB season ticket holders however while you did that.....

[Big George]

What are the implications of this?

(I defer to RKS who said the only committment was for the 2017 WC)

[Colours never run]

That's how I understood it too, Red Ken slave. Tick-tock, tick-tock..

[sutts07]

Coe's ambition is an irrelevance at this stage.

I am assuming that UK Athletics shiny new toy in Birmingham will keep him happy as of 2022 and considering Mayor Khan will be long gone by then too, I'd say things will look very different in a few years.

Who knows, we might even be playing European football as an established part of the English elite top 7/8 clubs by then. We'd be a very attractive proposition.

[Big George]

I think taking the athletics legacy away will be very difficult politically. The accusations that we have been given a free stadium paid for by the taxpayer will get louder. The Baroness is an less even sympathetic figure than ever after the Phillip Green stuff. We'd struggle.

[preston]

We wouldn't be given a free stadium though, we would have to buy it surely. The value would be interesting based on the rent we pay for around 25 days use, against a multi-million pound loss making building being propped up by the tax payer. Financially it should be a no brainer.

[Kentish Hammer]

I know he is a club legend but Trevor Brooking's involvement in all of this surely has to be questioned.

He criticised those involved in the Burnley events, but any true Hammer would understand where those protesting were coming from.

And now he is openly talking about stadium adjustments which, together with the recent announcement about looking into the squaring off of the stands behind the goals, surely demonstrates that moving us there in the first place was seriously wrong.

Not saying that he is comparable to GSB, but the likes of him, Cottee and Noble who have openly gone along with this from day one need to take a look at their souls in my opinion.

[Believer]

Not being an architectural guru but...if we were to move the east stand towards the west could we rebuild the east as a huge one tier Kop rather than 2 tiers ?