The Transformation of Pompey's Fratton Park

modern stadiums tend to be bowl like and not so so vibrant as fratton Park the atmosphere at fren Park is unique the owners Michael hoody's family when they procured the club looked at various options and flew around a whole array of stadiums all through Europe and in the UK um but all sort of avenues always leaded to to remain at fratton Park so it was chosen to keep that unique atmosphere and build on it it was concluded that the best thing was to try and renovate what we've got and then look to further expansion as they progressed up through the divisions so there are a few stadiums in the UK which are similar to the Archer Bal Lee southand uh and we chose Fulham as one so we had several V visits to fham uh and Arena have done two of the main stands there so that led to them sort of being the the preferred partner for us to negotiate and work through the stands and what we want to deliver and the original brief um of of the grand stands all the way through were done by Michael R's family and his architect Bob stands back in America and then we took those ideas and develop them through so the concept was always Michaels back in the USA and those concept to become reality when we took them through with working drawings and local companies generally value engineering has always been considered to be chopping out quality and uh maybe architectural Merit somewhere in the design and saving money that way we think that's probably quite a slavish way of doing it so after we realized that we wanted to stay platton Park we we needed specialist input to take us from what we had to where we are today one of the key things was um working with a collaborative model so so both hgp Architects and Arena um produced a collaborative model which meant that you know we could understand the existing constraints on the site we understand the existing Stadium layout um we wanted to make sure we maximize the number of seats um obviously with the safety regulations need to be met so it was great because we could interrogate that model together like a lot of the clubs that we work with um both in the non- league and through the football league pyramid we had a longstanding relationship with Portsmouth football club and that goes back kind of 10 15 years where we provided Stadium maintenance services and things like seat Replacements on a periodic basis four years ago when this project started we started talking with the company PMC who are obviously heavily involved in the general renovation of the stadium along with uh our colleagues and friends from hgp Architects about how we could develop the scheme that they put through planning for the complete renovation of the stadium all the stands were operating under different safety criteria so we have state stands operating at sort of p7 which is 70% of capacity we had the north probably operating at 75% of its capacity and the Milton end was heading down to 50% of its capacity so we're here in the South stand at fratton Park this was the first phase of work that we did here um and they had a persistent issue here where for years the safety certificate had been reduced in terms of capacity so numbers had been capped so our remit was to come to this uh lower tier in particular take a 100y old insitu concrete Terrace which was uh very shallow rake Sidelines suboptimal safety issues due to inconsistent tread depths Riser Heights gangway whips Etc and turn that into a safe 100% capacity use area again so what we did is we devised the system using box section steel lightweight steel all manually handled all very cost effective to fabricate and install and we overlaid that system on top top of the existing lower tier we've now got a fantastic area here which seats up to 1500 people a mix of GA seats and VIP seats and also the new players Dugout that we've created and that threads seamlessly into the existing upper tier so we've now turned a two-tier stand traditional stand effectively into one continuous single tier stand with modern dimensions and safety certificate issues gone away now forever all those stands so the fratton in operates at P1 the South stand operates at P1 the north operates at P1 and the milon down props at P1 so we are 100% of capacity you don't need to go to a stadium designer um going to um some like hgp and Arena um you get a better service I think you get um you get the best of by [Music] world

Channel: Sports Venue Business

Views: 29,796

Keywords: Portsmouth FC, Fratton Park, Michael Eisner, Arena Group, Stadium Solutions, sports business, football industry, EFL, stadia, #stadia, PMC Construction, engineersHRW, HPG Architects, stadium design, Sports Venue Business, #sportsbiz, #sportsindustry, football

Id: JBcY1JcFxP4

Length: 5min 10sec (310 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2024