Edgar Street is currently a
three sided stadium but hopefully it will return to four sides sometime
in the future. But when is up to Herefordshire Council.
And Hereford FC chairman Ken Kinnersley admitted to BN that there hadn't been much real progress lately. Supporters will need to be patient.
"However
the one thing I am absolutely confident of now, having had a number of
meetings with both officers and elected members of the council, there is
considerable enthusiasm to do something about the Blackfriars End," said Kinnersley.
"They
are well aware that it is an eyesore, not only does it discredit the
city, it brings discredit on the football club. It looks awful giving
the appearance of being a scrapyard. If you view it from the Old Market it really looks poor.
"They are very keen to do
something about that as part of the Urban Village Regeneration which is
going on, but this is not going to be a quick fix, it's going to take a
long time. There's an awful lot of work to be done.
"First thing is we don't know what so called foundations are under that stand. I suspect like much of this place it was built on clinkers from the old steam trains at Barrs Court.
"Is that contaminated waste, I don't know? We'll only know when they get in there and look at it.
"The other problem is that all the mains ultilies, gas, water, electric, run along there somewhere underground to supply the football club.
"In addition behind there we have two ten thousand litre irrigation tanks and all the sprinkler system they feed and more importantly we've got Ben's hut where he keeps all his equipment. In addition there are two mobile phone sub-stations, one at each end, plus the two floodlight towers.
"Just thinking about the logistics of removing everything and
keeping the main utilities alive whilst all this goes on is going to
take an awful lot of planning and that is without the time delay that
the planning permission is going to involve.
"And then, somehow, they have
to find a financial model that will both build the commercial element
and the stand that they have promised we will have pitchside.
"It's a medium to long-term
plan, absolute minimum two years. If we see something happening in three
years I think that would be good progress. More likely four to five
years.
"The other caveat I would mention to our supporters
is not to be fooled by artist's impressions, whoever publishes them.
They are literally a representaion to show what something may look like
and invariably they doctor them in such a way that they look a little
bit like, I don't know, the Emirates."
Given the Council owns the Blackfriars End how much responsibilty falls on them as opposed to the football club?
"I
would say 100% as it's theirs. That end is not in our lease. We
deliberately kept it out of our lease so therefore any costs arising out
of any redevelopement fall to the Council."
Should the club be promoted to the Football League is it a requirement that we have that fourth stand?
"It is but I'm given to believe by Martin Watson that it is possible to get a deregation for a limited period of time."
The Meadow End isn't going to last forever.
"A slightly longer timescale but not that much.When we first moved in three years ago the structural engineer said he thought a lifespan of ten years. That is now seven and he hasn't changed his assessment of it. It can only get worse.
"So in the fullness of time we are going to have to look at that as well."
Would a 'new' Meadow End attract a grant if it's all standing?
"As far as I know grants for safe standing stands haven't yet been accepted. If it is accepted that would help and that is what we would be aiming for."
Will the club have to source grant money for the Blackfriars End?
"I
hope that's all done by the Council but that may not be possible. On
the basis that stands are usually costed on a per-seat basis, we have
been in discussions about the size of the stand that we need. We have to
view that in conjunction with a recent reappraisal of the capacity of
the stadium following work that director Paul Quarrell has undertaken.
"It has recently been re-inspected and we are hopeful that from the present sub 5,000 we could be up to somewhere approaching 6.000 which would be very helpful not least because it would save all the questions from supporters saying I couldn't buy a ticket but there were empty seats. We are currently awaiting approval from the Safety Advisory Group and they will determine the final capacity.
"Looking
realistically at the attendance we could expect here on a match by
match basis, we could adjust the size of the new stand we think we need
to something which is more realistic. There's no point in having a
stadium that can hold 50,000 people when you know your capacity is
around about 5,000.
"I think we'll also try to work in a
little bit of future-proofing in the hope that as the city builds and
more people move into the city, we might be able to attract more
supporters. Similarily when we achieve the level of community engagement we are aiming for then, hopefully, that will also attract more supporters.
"Realism with a little bit of ambition or ambition with a bit of realism!"