New Stadium Details And Discussions

worcestersauce said:

You don't know what you're missing.

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LeSoupeKitchen said:

If they've redesigned the entire facade post planning does that mean we haven't seen exactly how they're going to finish the outside yet? We just know the shape?

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Col_M said:

I thought the bill had risen from 400 to 750 because Levy has put his Overtime form in.

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• Design and engineering work (inescapable for all builds)
• Planning process (legal etc)
• Land acquisition. (It may have been happening over 10-15 years, but without it, the stadium doesn't get built and the land was acquired for that purpose alone)

• Service buildings (Ticket office, club shop, museum etc.)
• Enabling works (Hotel, extreme sports, residential, Lilywhite House)
• The OS bid (costs in the multi millions)

LeSoupeKitchen said:

If they've redesigned the entire facade post planning does that mean we haven't seen exactly how they're going to finish the outside yet? We just know the shape?

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Phischy said:

I think both figures could be accurate, or equally inaccurate. I wouldn't necessarily assume that we can just 'plump for something in the middle' rather they each include different things.

The difficulty is, it depends on the basis for the comparison...

The most simple version of 'cost' is the cost of erecting the stadium alone on the site. Effectively then you're talking about parts and labour. Obviously this is everything from groundworks up to final fit-out, but it hardly tells the whole story.

Then there's the various other bits and pieces, which people choose to ignore in varying quantities, which make comparisons with other projects anything ranging from difficult to unhelpful.

The obvious for us are: -

The things that really should definitely be included regardless of whether we are talking about 'just the stadium' or the whole project...

• Design and engineering work (inescapable for all builds)
• Planning process (legal etc)
• Land acquisition. (It may have been happening over 10-15 years, but without it, the stadium doesn't get built and the land was acquired for that purpose alone)

Then there's the extras

• Service buildings (Ticket office, club shop, museum etc.)
• Enabling works (Hotel, extreme sports, residential, Lilywhite House)
• The OS bid (costs in the multi millions)

Plus the stuff I've forgotten about.

The big differential is the cost of the enabling works, which no doubt accounts for much of the difference between the £400m and £750m figures quoted. When you consider Chelsea, they are doing none of this for their stadium, whilst actually knocking down the enabling development associated with the Ken Bates redevelopment of Stamford Bridge. For us, that additional cost is essential. Whilst it actually adds a little risk (any development carries risk - such as the possibility of the bottom falling out of the housing market - however unlikely one may think that is) we need to do the extra work in order to raise further revenue. Much will be from selling the residential units some will be from leasing our the hotel and extreme sports centres to operating companies (assuming that's their model!) providing both an immediate return and ongoing income.

So yes, it sounds like a lot, but some of that bill is necessary in order to put the money to work to help pay for the rest. Some is unavoidable, because you have to pay architects and lawyers and some is cost which has arisen from Levy's opportunism and his penchant for redesigning and updating.

I am not sure what Chelsea's cost will be, but if memory serves, their stadium is going to be brick/brick clad. If they are actually using bricks that will be slow and expensive. If they are building in concrete and using cladding (they are almost like brick tiles you apply to the concrete to give the appearance of brick - quite common on large buildings these days) then is won't be quite so bad. But given the uniqueness and complexity of their stadium, I wouldn't be surprised if it costs rather more to build than our stadium. The difference is they don't need to buy large parcels of land and they won't be spending out on enabling works (nor generating revenue from said works).

Sorry of all that. I am not an expert and I am sure that there are bits that can be added or amended re; the above. But I think this helps to put things into perspective. It's so easy for people to guess at numbers and throw headline figures around without knowing or caring (in the case of journalists) if they are really comparing apples with apples. But with some care we can wade through the crap and make some educated guesses.

As ever, the simple fact is, we won't know what the true cost is until the day it is opened and even then the accounts will never have a line showing 'Stadium Development - £700m', because the costs will be broken down attributed to all sorts of things, massaged into the right places and dates for tax purposes and offset by all sorts of other unknowns. So lets not get our knickers in a twist and just trust that actually, we're only doing it because we're confident it's affordable.

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Col_M said:

I thought the bill had risen from 400 to 750 because Levy has put his Overtime form in.

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tottenmal said:

As other posters have said, the truth lies somewhere in between £400 and £750m.

The £750m figure came about during the planning phase, as the club were trying to get the council to agree to the scheme. Especially the 500+ flats which would normally need to be a mixture of affordable housing. The club stated that with the NDP costing £750 all in, they needed to get full markup from the housing to justify the cost. And having previously just built the brook house development, which surely fulfilled their affordable housing quota.

All told, the cost for the stadium itself will be far less than this, yet a state of the art stadium, housing, museum, hotel, medical centre, sports centre and more will end up costing close to this figure.

Obviously though journalists now simply report the cost of the stadium as £750m, and don't account for the fact that this is the probable cost for the entire NDP.

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Lilbaz said:

Chelsea will be brick. They have already bought a company that makes bricks to ensure they have a supply.

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Giovanni said:

I had a look at the live feeds just a moment ago and ive got to say its reaaally taking shape now! There still hard at work and currently putting in the concrete steps on the second tier and it looks awesome!!!! Second tier looks suprisingly steep compared to how i imagined.
Going to be a thing of beauty, and its moving along very fast again now.

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Spurger King said:

Too early to christen it the brick shit house?

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Spurger King said:

Too early to christen it the brick shit house?

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Flashspur said:

No

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thebenjamin said:

What's the link to the feeds? Cheers

EDIT: found it!

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thfc1973 said:

Did I miss something where our stadium originally cost 400M and no its suddenly going to cost 750M!!??? All along I have been reading it'll be costing us 400M and now suddenly over the last month the cost is now going to be nearly double. How did that happen?

Are the press maybe getting mixed up with the total NDP cost and the stadium cost?

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C0YS said:

I think rumours at least have suggested that the figure would end up much higher. I mean firstly the redesign is clearly much more expensive than the first one, also you have to factor in cost associated with the delays/redesigns/NFL compatibility/investment in corporate stuff etc.

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Lilbaz said:

@Rob might be an idea to sticky a link in the stadium forum.

Up to you though.

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We worked with a company called Vanguardia, who bring in acousticians, guys who are sound engineers. Atmosphere is made up of a bunch of things – a bit of science and a bit of art. One of the really important things we spent a lot of time with them on, and part of the driver for the [17,00 single tier, the largest of its type in the UK] south stand was about creating more clean reverberation times so songs last longer. The studies we’ve done with them shows when you start breaking up acoustics everyone gets out of sync, singing 'C’mon you Spurs' or whatever the song is, and so they stop singing. So once they create acoustics where they don’t break down, the reverberation times are quicker, they last longer, they get louder, and the louder people get, the louder people around them get, and so the atmosphere and the noise builds.

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It’s about the material the roof’s made of, the shape of the roof, where it inclines and where it doesn’t. We’re lining the underside of the roof with an aluminium soffit lining and it ends up working a bit like a concert hall, so we have sections where we’re adding more absorption where we need it so we have perforated bits with acoustic lining. I mean, it really has been considered much like a concert hall's acoustics would be considered, in order to get this incredible clarity of the acoustics within the seating bowl. The level it’s been taken to is unique. I don’t think we’ve ever done the amount of studies, the amount of work, the discussion of materials – where absorption is, where it isn’t – even how much padding do we have in the seats, where do we have that padding in the seats, which also deals with acoustics.

Daniel’s got quite a reputation as being a hard negotiator and everything, but I found him really enjoyable to work with. He’s incredibly detail focused. Two weeks ago, we spent six hours looking at the insides of lifts. And I don’t mean the cars, the mechanisms. We went up the Cheese Grater [Leadenhall Building] and he spent three hours talking to one of the Richard Rogers guys who designed the lifts there, with him saying, 'So what about those counter weights? How can we change those?' I mean how many chairmen do that? He’s the kind of client who continues to push you, saying is that good enough? Can we do better? And he’s not afraid to change things. We changed an entire façade of the building post-planning. He spends so much time thinking about it, working with you. I mean, I’ll meet Daniel three times a week, I’ll get a dozen emails from him a day saying, 'Have you seen this, look at this, what about this?' He’s always trying to make it better.

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