No I do think it will happen. I heard a rumour that our preferred main contractor has pulled out of the UK so we have to start the bidding process again. Just a rumour, no facts.

The PR did seem to be just that as they have nothing meaningful to say at the moment.

One more point

Popped down to Sainsbury’s Car Park and their empty store, except for CPFC employees getting their lunch, to have a peek at the building work. Good news….it has started…just. Men in high viz with a concrete mixer working on the access to the away dressing rooms and clearing away existing access by the temporary buildings.

Returning to the issue of Sainsbury’s, I can’t see how that huge store makes a profit. I have visited it occasionally over the years and have never seen it busy. I suspect it is being kept open to screw Palace again when we want to rebuild the Whitehorse Lane.

What work?

The stand is being built over the old stand while it is still open.

If we were relocating, we could just knock the whole thing down.

My interest now lies in when and how we will increase the Whitehorse.
I'm sure that we can add 3 or 4 thousand to that end by removing the Portakabin boxes and increasing the rake. That will be a piece of cake compared to the main stand.

Sainsbury's made £137 million this financial year. They are a big beast.
We can't bully them despite our very wealthy owners.
We could come to an agreement that benefits both parties, but it would have to be financially viable.

You would have to weigh the costs of moving the store or modifying it and building a new stand, along with Sainsbury's losses during the process, against the extra profit of a bigger capacity.
More likely, we just use the space we already own to rebuild a modified stand with a few thousand more seats.

I don't expect it to happen any time soon. When the new stand is up, I expect that will be the next project under consideration.
I would also expect the Arthur Wait roof to be replaced or modified to remove the pillars.

You heard wrong, it's Plough Lane.

No so sure about that Nicholas.
Technology is confusing the life out of me. If anything it’ll be the death of me. He he.

Whitehorse road end is due to have changes at the same time as the new stand is built
.the pitch is due to be lengthened, to meet international standards it will be lengthened at the Whitehorse end, I think it is 2 maybe three yards, will be taken from seating area that end

Looking at pictures, I worked out that you could probably add around another 3000 seats to the WHL if you used the space currently taken up by boxes. That would make it hold around 4500 with the longer pitch. That would take the capacity up near 37k with the new corner section next to the Holmesdale.

Looking at the Arthur Waite Stand, it is currently at ground level, so that means that a second tier would effectively only bring it up to the height of a one tier stand.
Would that be a problem with light etc?

Ideally, another modest sized tier could add say another 5k. That would take us over 40k.
That would put us up with the biggest stadiums outside of the really big boys.
Anything bigger would probably need relocation.

You can tell I have time on my hands this morning.

Edit.

The issue with the AW is that a second tier would presumably have to sit over the existing one due to lack of room behind it. That might cause an issue with sight lines for those at the rear of the lower tier.

This all just proves that I'm no architect.

Edited by Hrolf The Ganger (08 Jul 2024 11.35am)

There aren't actually that many houses directly behind the AW. They could be bought up I suppose.

One would have to question the need for a public road in that case. A pedestrian area could then be created with police access, and the new tier could then come backward.
Something like this would obviously require full cooperation from the council, then Mayor of London and fending off any local objections.
It certainly would make Selhurst Park more like a proper stadium.

Obviously, anything like this would be several years off. We won't see the Main Stand for 2 or 3 years, but it does seem like the club has to take advantage of our current status and grow to the levels of a bigger London club.
I don't know how much capacity you could squeeze out of the AW.
15K would be quite substantial when you consider that the new main stand will be around 13k.

If at some point we bought out Sainsbury's or incorporated it into a stand, we could probably then go to around 46K.

Do we really need more? Not until we start winning things.

I'm sure Steve Parish would be laughing if he read this stuff. It would be years of headache ahead for him.