Fenway plans for a new/redeveloped Anfield stadium?

Will we definitely be going with one of the two designs that have planning permission or is there potential for a re-design and fast-tracked planning application?

Whatever design it is they have to keep a "kop" type end as one of the designs showed previously.

I would also move away supporters up high like at Newcastle so LFC play to their own fans at both ends.

Liverpool FC dismiss reports club has decided to quit Anfield for new Stanley Park ground

By James Pearce
Jul 8 2011

LIVERPOOL FC have  emphatically  dismissed reports  today that they have  decided to quit  Anfield and build a  new ground in  Stanley Park.

Owners Fenway  Sports Group have  been considering  their options since  their £300million  takeover of LFC  last October.

And the club today  insisted the dual  option study into the  possibility of  redeveloping Anfield  - as well as looking at  plans for a new  stadium -  is ongoing.

Liverpool City  Council has granted  the club an extra  three months to  decide whether or  not they will take up  the option of a  999-year lease for the  Stanley Park site.

 
In theory that  gives the Reds until  September to make  a decision but  another extension  could be granted.

A Liverpool  spokesman today  insisted: “The club’s  position on the  stadium issue  remains unaltered  and no decision has  been made.

“We are  continuing to  examine both the  options – the  refurbishment of  Anfield and the new  stadium in Stanley  Park.

“A huge amount of  work on that is  ongoing and an  announcement will  be made in due  course.”

Back in May,  Fenway Sports  Group president Sam  Kennedy admitted  the club’s owners  were “combing the  earth” looking for a  naming rights  partner for a  potential new  stadium.

The outcome of  that search is going  to have a big bearing  on what’s decided as  a bumper naming  rights deal would pay  a significant chunk of  the construction costs.

When Arsenal moved to a  new ground in 2006, they  secured a 15-year naming  rights deal with Emirates  airline worth £100m.

If FSG opt to revamp  Anfield, then they will look for  sponsors for different areas of  the ground, rather than trying  to rebrand the stadium with a  sponsor's name.

Principal owner John Henry  has admitted the atmosphere  at Anfield “would be hard to  replicate” and a feasibility  study is being conducted into  how the ground could be  redeveloped.

The Anfield Road End and  the Main Stand could be  rebuilt to boost the capacity  and Henry oversaw a similar  project with his baseball side  Boston Red Sox, whose  Fenway Park home was  revamped.

However, there would be a  heavy price to pay with  Liverpool losing revenue  during the improvements due  to the smaller crowds.

 
It’s been suggested that a  15% reduction in global  construction costs caused by  the economic downturn may  now make building a new  stadium more attractive.

Dallas-based architects  HKS won the contract to  build a 60,000-capacity  stadium in Stanley Park in  2008 under previous owners  Tom Hicks and George Gillett  with the total cost estimated  at around £310 million.

It never happened but  those plans are still being  considered as well as those  submitted by  Manchester-based AFL, which  was the option favoured by  former chief executive Rick  Parry.

Both proposals have  planning permission from  Liverpool council.

The Government has  attempted to turn up the  pressure on Liverpool’s  owners to decide where the  club’s future lies.

“There’s a really urgent  decision to be made there,  and in fact if that decision’s  not made, it holds back  regeneration,” housing  minister Grant Shapps said.

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-fc/liverpool-fc-news/2011/07/08/liverpool-fc-dismiss-reports-club-has-decided-to-quit-anfield-for-new-stanley-park-ground-100252-29017672/

ArberLFCFAN Arber Shkodra
@John_W_Henry Hi John, we all want to stay at Anfield. You should understand us, it's like our second home! Pleaz John, rebuild ANFIELD.
10 hours ago
in reply to @ArberLFCFAN ↑

@John_W_Henry
John W. Henry
@ArberLFCFAN Anfield would certainly be our first choice. But realities may dictate otherwise. So many obstacles...
9 hours ago via web

ArberLFCFAN Arber Shkodra
@John_W_Henry Hi John, we all want to stay at Anfield. You should understand us, it's like our second home! Pleaz John, rebuild ANFIELD.
10 hours ago
in reply to @ArberLFCFAN ↑

@John_W_Henry
John W. Henry
@ArberLFCFAN Anfield would certainly be our first choice. But realities may dictate otherwise. So many obstacles...
9 hours ago via web

It does sound as though they would prefer to remain at Anfield and have obviously rigourously explored the feasibility of doing so. If the practicalities and the financial ramifications dictate it cannot go ahead some serious consideration would have to be given to the alternative....and building a new stadium in these times of austerity is worthy of lengthy consideration. 

One thing's for sure we'll know within the space of 6 weeks which way they will be going.

F**k the Mirror is full of sh*t.

Really are turning into an anti Liverpool paper I have their football app on my phone and they never talk about us in a positive light its always something snide and sinister.

F**k the Mirror is full of sh*t.

Really are turning into an anti Liverpool paper I have their football app on my phone and they never talk about us in a positive light its always something snide and sinister.

Apart from Brian Reade.

I tend not to say anything cynical about the owners as I genuinely believe they are trying to take the club in the right direction and make money from us the right way.
I do, however feel that they have already decided that a new stadium with naming rights is the way to go and will take that option sooner or later. They know what a sensitive issue it is for us all but if we really want to compete without taking on debt again, I think it's the only real option.
That's just my gut feeling.

The Mirror is printed in Mancland and all that entails.

They will just get creative like they do here in the states..."Standard Charter Field at New Anfield" or something something.

A 999 year lease?

"With the option for the lease at Apple In.'s Stanley Park up next year, 3010, Liverpool FC's new owners have decisions to make. Do they move themselves to the fashionable stadiums in Mars, or play on a spaceship? Thankfully, one decision they won't have to make is on the playing side of things. Led by Esteban Gerrard, Jaime Carragher, and Jeffrey Reina, Liverpool recently won their 522nd Premiership title. As Manchester United continue to wallow in the 3rd division, Liverpool continues to tighten their grip on the 'most successful English team' title. They are continuing to solicit designers for a shirt to fit 522 stars on, along with their 310 European Cups."

Previous owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett had promised to build a hi-tech new stadium, but when costs soared through they £400million barrier they were simply unable to keep faith with that commitment.

Bollocks, puts this Jurno into perspective. unable to keep faith with that commitment my arse. They never had any commitment at all. Did he notice that court case we had last year, and the fact they had no money what so ever.

Whatever they decide ,i"ve got my trowel and spiritlevel ready for action,bring it on.

The Mirror is printed in Mancland and all that entails.

So is the Liverpool Echo.

Just sayin like.

 Whichever way the owners decide to go it should bring some closure to new stadium or a refurbishment of our Anfield.I have faith that the owners will not hang around and give us false hope when they decide which option to take.Hicks and Gillett took us for a ride and nearly got away with it but I berlieve these owners are sincere in what they want to achieve for Liverpool Football Club.

So is the Liverpool Echo.

Just sayin like.

Was going to add that mate and a lot of people stopped buying it, not so much because it moved out of it's birthplace but because the quality of the publication has suffered as a result of the new owners.

From the activity we've seen in the past few days, all signs seem to be pointing towards Stanley Park for me.

The initial statements from the club seemed like an update with a slight aim on putting pressure on the council to do us a favour and make it easier for us to redevelop Anfield, which seems like the preferred option to the fans and, on the face of it at least, FSG. The response from Joe Anderson certainly backed the notion up, defensive of the councils say in the matter.

Yet while our statements could be seen as us putting pressure on the external parties who could have a say in the matter, the more I'm thinking of it the more I am beginning to feel that the comments are the start of the club letting us know that we're going to have to say goodbye to Anfield.

If the cost of a new ground is going to be £300m, the fact that a naming rights/shirt sponsor deal on par with Man City's with Etihad would more than pay for the stadium in it's own right speaks volumes to me. Even a deal that covered half the costs would be preferable for us, in terms of minimising the debt on the club. 

If the cost of a new ground is going to be £300m, the fact that a naming rights/shirt sponsor deal on par with Man City's with Etihad would more than pay for the stadium in it's own right speaks volumes to me.

Let's just take a step back.

Don't add in the cost of shirt sponsorship or kit supplier. Because we get that anyway, we get £30M a year currently from adidas and Standard Chartered.  Or if it were to continue £300M for 10 years.

But we use that on players/wages etc. It gets spent at the moment.

All the various deals I've seen for naming rights have included sponsorship of the club so that part should be taken out.

At best naming rights alone will represent 50% of the cost, and probably nearer 25%.

I think the cost of the new stadium can be considered to be about £200M.  I'd estimate the club could pay off the stadium debt in about 6-8 years based on a 60,000 seater.

Let's just take a step back.

Don't add in the cost of shirt sponsorship or kit supplier. Because we get that anyway, we get £30M a year currently from adidas and Standard Chartered.  Or if it were to continue £300M for 10 years.

Aye, very true. Didn't think of that. Think it was just automatic considering City's was quoted at that price as an all inclusive deal. Arsenal's deal with Emirates too.

I wonder how much of each of those deals come in at the stadium side of things? Considering City's wage bill, you would imagine that a fair amount of the deal will be swallowed up quite quickly.

Regardless of the proportions, if City can get a big money deal like that then we (once back up there in terms of success) will easily match it or even surpass it, especially when our exisiting deal isn't far off with shirt sponsorship alone.

Also, on a slightly related note, a quick search for Arsenal's deal highlights how bad their's is in direct comparison with City's. Much less money for both stadium rights and shirt sponsor combined, but on a longer term deal.

I was just checking the Emirates stadium info, and wiki says the whole project ended up costing 470 M pounds. So it would be fair to say our new stadium would cost between 400-500 M. Arsenal got a really sh*t deal with their naming rights, and I agree Ian could perhaps manage to double that for us.

So at best case we could have half of our stadium financed solely by naming rights. But we couldn't get picky with the stadium name, though. Not for that money. And I think we're in a good position with our squad - we bought some young players and the team is almost complete, so it won't require major investments in the next 3-4 seasons.

God read  this>>


Henry in a landmark debate
Stadium’s future Liverpool’s concern

LIVERPOOL, England - Anfield, the storied ground that is home to Liverpool Football Club, has been compared with Fenway Park, even more so since the team was purchased by Red Sox owner John Henry.


Now Henry and his Fenway Sports Group are facing a question similar to when they bought the Red Sox a decade ago: build a modern stadium or upgrade the iconic old one?


Early sentiment here among Liverpool fans was that Henry will do at Anfield what he did at Fenway - upgrade and add on, but keep the basic confines of the original.


Last week, Ian Ayre, Liverpool’s chief executive, tried to downplay suggestions that the team has already decided that building a new stadium was more realistic than redeveloping Anfield. He told the BBC the team would not be rushed into making a decision.


Ayre’s insistence that a decision had not yet been made came after Henry noted on Twitter that there were “many obstacles’’ to adding on to Anfield.


Joe Anderson, leader of the Liverpool City Council, said Liverpool fans and residents simply want closure, one way or the other. Like other city officials, Anderson believes an improved Anfield, or a new stadium, will help regenerate the surrounding neighborhood.


Opened in 1884, Anfield originally was home field for Everton, the city’s other Premier League team. But after Everton decamped for nearby Goodison Park in 1892, Liverpool Football Club moved in and has been here ever since.


There’s more history, and certainly more human remains, scattered around Anfield than just about any other ground in English football. If it is still slightly unusual, and usually unsanctioned, for someone to have their ashes scattered at Fenway, it’s a regular and official occurrence at Anfield.


“We scatter someone’s ashes here at least once a week, sometimes more than one,’’ says Kevin O’Shea, an assistant manager at Anfield. “An awful lot of Liverpool supporters can only find eternal rest here.’’


But as much reverence as there might be for the dead - including the 96 Liverpool fans who died at the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 and who are remembered with a shrine at one entrance to Anfield - it is what to do with the living that is occupying the relatively new owners.


What’s noticeable walking around the stadium is the rather cramped confines. There’s no such thing as a bad seat among the 45,000. But neither is there much room to move around. During a match, there are no hawkers selling food, drink, or souvenirs. The aisles simply aren’t big enough.


More concerning to Henry, as he tries to increase revenue flow to pay for better players to get Liverpool back to the top four finishers in the Premier League, is the limited space for corporate boxes and hospitality.

Anfield has just 30 boxes. They’re small, with room for just 10 spectators. Compare that with Liverpool’s hated rival, and perpetual Top Four finisher, Manchester United. Old Trafford, Man U’s equally iconic ground, holds 76,000 spectators and is ringed with 200 corporate boxes. Even Chelsea, whose Stamford Bridge stadium holds just 42,000, has 100 corporate boxes. It doesn’t hurt that Chelsea’s owner, Russian businessman Roman Abramovich, is one of the richest men in the world.


Liverpool diehards get sensitive about talk of revenue streams.


“Chelsea has five-star chefs, but they don’t have five European Cups,’’ says O’Shea, who as a boy worshipped the Reds, as LFC is known, and can tell you the dates and every possible fact about those five European championships, not to mention Liverpool’s 18 league championships. Man U just won its 19th league championship, a sore subject here on Merseyside.


But O’Shea and other Liverpool diehards know that while you can relish history, it doesn’t put good teams on the pitch today.


“We turn away about 20,000 people for every game,’’ O’Shea said. That would pay for a decent midfielder or two.


The famous loyalty that Liverpool supporters show goes both ways. They limit season ticket-holders to 23,000, and there is a waiting list of 60,000.


“The club takes very seriously the notion of being able to get a ticket on game day,’’ said Stephen Done, the curator of the Liverpool Football Club museum, which is housed inside Anfield.


“We have season ticket-holders who live in Scandanavia and travel here for every home game,’’ he said.


It’s that kind of loyalty that makes replacing Anfield with a modern, bigger stadium more than a matter of mathematics.


Done said under a plan to build a 73,000-seat stadium in adjacent Stanley Park, “The old Anfield would disappear. The area around Anfield would be rejuvenated. It would help the locals.’’


But it would come at an emotional cost.


“A lot of people live for this team,’’ O’Shea explained. “For over 100 years, generations of the same family have been coming here. A lot of people’s ashes are spread here. Some clubs take payment to spread your ashes. We don’t do that. We’d never build on the pitch, no matter what happens regarding a new stadium. If I had to guess, 90 percent of supporters would want to stay here.’’


Even if Fenway Sports Group decides to build a stadium, the common local consensus is that politics and regulation would make it virtually impossible to get it done, at least any time soon.


Anfield’s amenities are spartan. The press box is just that: a box with a couple of dozen seats, smack dab in the middle of the main stand. The visitors’ dressing room looks impossibly small and basic. You can’t call it a locker room because there are no lockers.


Liverpool Football Club and its supporters are deeply aware and respectful of tradition, but they are not Pollyannaish. In 1978, the team became the first in the Premier League to splash a sponsor’s name across their jerseys.


Like left field at Fenway Park, Spion Kop, the famous section of Anfield named after a battle in the Boer War where more than 300 Liverpudlians were killed, used to be a green grassy hill.


Like Fenway, Anfield is a tourist attraction. More than 150,000 people take the stadium tour every year.


Beyond expanding the seating capacity, especially corporate boxes, Fenway Sports Group will be able to add advertising.


In the pubs that surround Anfield, fans worry that ticket prices will rise, as they did after Henry bought the Red Sox. Right now, the average ticket costs about $70.


“Look around,’’ said Jimmy Little, a Liverpool fan, an hour before a game against Manchester City. “No one here is rich.’’


But the history is, and that’s the balance that Henry will have to find. Liverpool fans hated the previous American owners, but he has has impressed the locals with his grasp of their history. Done said he was showing Henry around the museum and was surprised when Henry pointed at a photograph and knew that one of the men in it was Bill Shankly, the manager credited with bringing Liverpool back to the top after it had fallen to the bottom in the 1950s.


“Mr. Henry knows his stuff,’’ said Done.


Liverpool fans hope he knows his limits, and theirs, too.
link.............Link

Surprised we've heard nothing on the stadium for a while, I guess we'll know something soon - the deadline is September

Surprised we've heard nothing on the stadium for a while, I guess we'll know something soon - the deadline is September

No news is good news is probably an optimistic appraisal of the situation presently.
With the relentless global economic downturn the prospect for any proposed business venture on the scale of the Anfield regeneration or new build would encourage the financiers to back pedal furiously as they play for time and scan the fiscal horizon for signs of a recovery.
It really would be an eternal optimist who held out any hope of a definitive decision in the near future as the world is confronted with economic turmoil, much as it would delight the majority to the financial players throwing money about now is really NOT an attractive proposition.  

LFC is a fairly attractive loan proposition these days, they have low-debt and are generating a lot of revenue and are therefore highly likely to pay back any loan - plus the fall in the price of construction materials will help to reduce the cost of the build so we won't be looking to loan that much.  Banks don't make money by holding on to it, they make it by getting rid and collecting the interest.  Football has proven quite resilient to the downturn anyway, as the demand for it is highly inelastic.