Why do some people still persist with Kenwright's mistruths from the time of the destination kirkby debacle? These have all long since been disproven.
Redevelopment of GP is entirely possible.... in fact for £600m you could probably redevelop it and half of Walton, but you wouldnt need to spend anywhere near that amount to match (or even surpass) BMD's capacity, as proven by several costed expansions elsewhere. Yes, some small footprint expansion would be required to get up to 53k capacity, but this needn't be too extensive or costly, especially given that the houses on Muriel and Diana St (off Bullens Rd) are literally the cheapest to be found outside any stadium in the country, and when just bridging the current road could readily yield a good capacity uplift on that side.
As regards knocking down people's houses, people seem to forget that we knocked over 100 houses down at the Park end (1990s) and Gwladys st (1930s) combined.... and I don't remember any furore or fuss whatsoever when the Park end's houses were demolished. Most people accepted that it was simply an expansion of one of the world's most historic stadiums. Indeed if the current homeowners and landlords were offered just £100k per house, they'd probably be only too happy to grab the opportunity, and would not thank you for faux moralising on their behalf. So 20 houses would only mean an outlay of just £2m, 40 houses just £4m etc. We're currently looking at well over £100m outlay to acquire and prep the BMD site before building anything.... so even a major footprint expansion at GP would be chicken feed by comparison.
The school is already earmarked for a long overdue redevelopment and there would be joint venture enabling opportunities there, so again hardly a great difficulty compared to some of the very expensive obstacles at BMD.
Replacing the upper Bullens and upper Gwladys St will get rid of all obstructed views on those sides, and there is a great opportunity to add capacity on one or both of those stands, especially if the lower tiers are converted to safe standing either fully or partially. The Park end could be expanded backwards to be considerably larger than the south stand in the BMD proposals, which after all is literally only a few rows deeper than the current number at the Gwladys St (upper+lower), and hardly the vast new home end Spurs have built. The Parkend could be as big as any end stand in the country, as the space is there, and ours already.
So, let's drop the "it can't be done" mantra.... several architects and many other clubs have shown otherwise.
Before the usual culprits get on their high horses.... I should say I'm as excited as most about BMD, but don't see the need to support it with these long outdated and false assertions regarding GP.... I also still have some slight reservations and concerns regarding the BMD plans to date:
We still don't know how it will be funded, and/or if we will be left with massive long term debt that might cut deeply into any benefit. As far as we have been shown there doesn't appear to be any enabling uplift to go towards those costs, that would often be a major motivator and financial lever for any stadium move. The transport plan is at best rudimentary with no major supporting infrastructure costed at a site that currently has no public transport services. The cost of £5-600m is roughly double that of MEIS design for Roma which was roughly the same capacity, and if anything more complex (above ground), and roughly £100-200m more than the Feyenoord stadium which is also bigger, more complex and has a closing roof. So yes, the videos are quite impressive and I'm even currently looking at apartments in Stanley Dock.... but not yet 100% convinced about every aspect.
