Upton Park in the 21^st Century

I use this space to give you a short run-down of the planned development of Upton Park as being reported in the Bondholders News August 1997 issue. Peter Storrie was present at the Annual General Meeting on the 8th May 1997, therefore you can be assured that the information below is first hand information:

Peter (Storrie) was asked about the redevelopment of the Stands.

He confirmed that the Council had turned down the plans for the East Stand, they had objected to it flying 3 metres over the (Priory) road so the plans have had to be changed.

The east corner, next to the Bobby Moore Stand, will be filled in.

They have to rebuild the St. Edwards school, hopefully free up the land to start to rebuild the West Stand.

This stand will be about 8 or 9 metres higher than the Bobby Moore and will hold 18,000 increasing ground capacity to about 36,500.

It will be built about 5 metres back from its current position so that if at a later stage there is a need to rebuild the East Stand this can be done within the Clubs own land, which should raise less planning objections. The total capacity would then be increased to about 42,000.

If the plans are approved and the building work goes according to plan the West Stand should be completed by the end of 1999.

The re-siting of Bondholders and season ticket holders during the redevelopment was queried. Peter has asked the architects to look at the possibility of retaining the lower tier for a while. Because building will start further back, it is hoped they could build the upper tier first then swoop over seats before they start on the lower tier. This might take longer but would allow capacity to be kept up and cause less inconvenience for supporters. There are currently  8,400 seats in the West Stand, 3,500 to 4,000 of which are season-ticket holders. There are 13,000 season ticket holders in total. Capacity would go down to 17-18,000 if the West lower tier cannot be retained, so there would be a problem.

The lower Centenary which holds 3,600 will be used as a temporary transfer area. There will have to be a ban on away supporters during the rebuilding, and special dispensation will be required for cup matches. The original idea was to increase the capacity in the East Stand, but they now have no option but to do it this way.

Oh, by the way, here's a stadium-map that can also be found on the Official West Ham Website.