New south / south west stand

Does anyone know if there are any facilities in the concourse yet? When I went in the South Stand for the Burton game it was empty and there were huge queues for the outlets in the south west corner. Trying to decide whether to go through the turnstiles early or stay in the fan zone/bar

I think 2 tiered stands are a terrible design spliiting fans so the atmosphere doesn't spread as well.

I hope there will be a very big new single tiered East stand. Invest as much as possible in a new East Stand and the rest can wait. A consideration is that the view is better from the side of the pitch and so the club can make more money per new seat.

Well if the club has between 30 - 35 million to spend which includes about 20 million of the owners own money. Then knocking down the east stand and doing a total rebuild would be far better than their original plan to extend the existing stand , by builing either side,lets face it the east stand is pretty crap .
It isn't even central with the stadium, the terracing at the away end is smaller than terracing on the North side of the stand. It would mean reducing capacity back to 10,000 while the work is carried out , as there are 1,100 seats in the East stand and about 1,500 terrace spaces.
But a tidy new all seater stand would be a great improvement.

I don’t think £20mn gets us very far. I doubt we’ll get a rebuild at that amount of money - it’ll be extensions on the East Stand I expect.

Not to say it can’t make for a good stand though and I’m sure the North will be a proper stand

You know more than me about New Plough Lane but I understand 3 sides are temporary stands? It was built 3-4 years ago?

I’m lead to believe construction costs have largely doubled since covid. As a diyer who had extensive work built since then i understand timber is still twice the price it was and a lot of materials are more expensive as well. However someone in construction would know better than me!

A quick google suggests it was a greyhound stadium (the irony!) so there’s probably a lot less destruction required. And of course they didn’t have to worry about still playing there and losing most of their existing facilities for however long it took to build the stand and all the faff and inconvenience that goes with it

Our temporary stand cost £3mn alone, so if we say called it £2mn as it was before everything went mad then it would be about £28mn for their main stand.

If you’re telling me the whole site was £34mn I feel that reinforces that it’ll be an extension rather than a full rebuild.

If it’s £20mn or so for us and we still need to get a North Stand and something in the North West as well then that just reinforces it even more as the North will surely have to be complete rebuild.

I sat in the south stand yesterday for the first time only because I’ve done my Achilles and wasn’t sure about manoeuvring myself up and down the terraces of the thatchers.
There’s still no stalls in the concourse yet , all they had was a mobile bar with two serving it took 15 minutes to get served and there were only 20 people in front of me when I joined the queue.
The seating is very cramped , I’m only 5,9 and my knees were touching the seat in front of me which actually made my legs and achillies ache as well.
Anyone taller than me would have found it even more cramped and if you’re over 6 ft then I’d forget it as there were blokes that tall sat on the diagonal luckily for them it wasn’t quite a sell out as if every seat had been full they literally wouldn’t have been able to sit down.
The atmosphere was extremely quiet where I was sat , could only hear the derby fans who were loud.
All in all not impressed with it at all , I suppose it’s increased the capacity which is good but I’ve got literally no other positives to say really.

The way I see it..

If the North stand is rumoured already to be a 2 tier stand then for me the East surely needs to be the same.. both being built from pitch level upwards.

Surely we don't want to tart the Mem up and still have 4 sides that dont look alike at all.

It's a football stand what were you expecting? As far as leg room given the average UK males is 5'10" so it seems pointless designing a stand for 6'+ fans. 

Spot on, as much legroom as I have had in any football stand I have sat in.
Not surprised about atmosphere, it was the same all around the ground and not surprised the team hardly did anything to excite anybody. It was totally full in the block we sit in and did not have anybody sat on the diagonal around us.
As regards the concourse we have been promised bars and tvs etc, it would appear that the promised next few weeks is going into the start of next season.