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I'm surprised there's been no mention of the proposed sports village on the forum over the weekend.

It all looks fairly promising and a much more realistic and affordable proposal for the future needs of Town and Reds.

It seems they are working on a stadium along the lines of FC United's Broadhurst Park, which has a capacity of 4400, more than ample for Town and Reds needs and nice and compact to create a good atmosphere.

http://www.fcunited.ru/en/broadhurst_park/  

It'll be interesting to see how things progress in the next few months.

https://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/19048814.plans-move-forward-workington-sports-village/

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4 hours ago, Death to the Rah Rah's said:

I'm surprised there's been no mention of the proposed sports village on the forum over the weekend.

Its probably because the majority of us don`t believe it will happen.

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If it does happen you would hope the main stand would be similar to our current one with standing at the bottom and elevated seats above. Nothing worse than watching RL at low down pitch level.

Can't believe they arnt looking at developing DP one stand at a time. Loads of room to do it and next to no disruption as they build - start with the river end and work round. Why the obsession with building on the Reds which is basically a hemmed in site?

 

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2 hours ago, Mr Frisky said:

If it does happen you would hope the main stand would be similar to our current one with standing at the bottom and elevated seats above. Nothing worse than watching RL at low down pitch level.

Can't believe they arnt looking at developing DP one stand at a time. Loads of room to do it and next to no disruption as they build - start with the river end and work round. Why the obsession with building on the Reds which is basically a hemmed in site?

 

I agree with Mr Frisky totally, especially about the Main stand.

It seems they are looking at FC United's ground - this was great for FC United as they didn't have a ground to start with.

This will also be favourable and good for the Reds as they would not lose their home and they no longer have a Main stand as well as the fact that they only have a capacity of 3100.- all of these would be bettered by a new ground similar to FC United.

But Derwent park is Towns home and we do have a big Main stand with good viewing and we also have 10000 capacity and ample parking and much more potential with the extra space.

Town would lose out on all of these points if replaced with a small FC United style ground - why build a 4400 capacity when we already have 10000.

 

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2 hours ago, Mr Frisky said:

If it does happen you would hope the main stand would be similar to our current one with standing at the bottom and elevated seats above. Nothing worse than watching RL at low down pitch level.

Can't believe they arnt looking at developing DP one stand at a time. Loads of room to do it and next to no disruption as they build - start with the river end and work round. Why the obsession with building on the Reds which is basically a hemmed in site?

 

I'm with you mate. 

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4 hours ago, Mr Frisky said:

If it does happen you would hope the main stand would be similar to our current one with standing at the bottom and elevated seats above. Nothing worse than watching RL at low down pitch level.

Can't believe they arnt looking at developing DP one stand at a time. Loads of room to do it and next to no disruption as they build - start with the river end and work round. Why the obsession with building on the Reds which is basically a hemmed in site?

 

Derwent Parks ground isnt the best, I remember from years ago when I worked for a company working on a scheme that one of the major problems was if we needed to add any more loads there would need to be a huge amount of groundwork done, a very costly amount. I wouldnt be surprised if thats why its been chosen to do it on Borough Park, though Ive no idea what the ground is like there.

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3 hours ago, Derwent Parker said:

why build a 4400 capacity when we already have 10000.

 

...maybe because neither Town or Reds have averaged gates over 4000 since the 50s !!

Even in the glorious early 90's Town's average attendance was just over the 3,000 mark, and very quickly dropped to circa 2,000 ish  bumped up by the occasional payday against Wigan and Bradford   

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26 minutes ago, Death to the Rah Rah's said:

maybe because neither Town or Reds have averaged gates over 4000 since the 50s !!

What's to say they wont in the future??  They certainly wont be able to in a compact low attendance stadium. Limits ambission IMO.

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1 hour ago, Death to the Rah Rah's said:

...maybe because neither Town or Reds have averaged gates over 4000 since the 50s !!

Even in the glorious early 90's Town's average attendance was just over the 3,000 mark, and very quickly dropped to circa 2,000 ish  bumped up by the occasional payday against Wigan and Bradford   

Should be building it with a capacity that enables it to be used for more than just town and reds. Limiting it to 5000 means it can't try and bring representative matches, cup matches, quality musical artists etc. 

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4 hours ago, Derwent Parker said:

I think Borough Park was chosen originally because of the overall project which included an additional hybrid pitch and additional community changing facilities, additional car parking and also including a lot of landscaping and riverside walks etc - all of which pushed the price up.

basically this, plus better access road in and out and Lonsdale park site to he included as well which makes it a very big space to develop right down the river front as well. 

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5 hours ago, dkw said:

Derwent Parks ground isnt the best, I remember from years ago when I worked for a company working on a scheme that one of the major problems was if we needed to add any more loads there would need to be a huge amount of groundwork done, a very costly amount. I wouldnt be surprised if thats why its been chosen to do it on Borough Park, though Ive no idea what the ground is like there.

hasn't all the samples/ground tests been done already ap BP? sure it was as done by the previous council before the original project got binned.

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13 hours ago, rockerlad said:

hasn't all the samples/ground tests been done already ap BP? sure it was as done by the previous council before the original project got binned.

Yeah there were several boreholes done. I expect the results were good enough as the project moved forward.

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19 hours ago, Death to the Rah Rah's said:

...maybe because neither Town or Reds have averaged gates over 4000 since the 50s !!

Even in the glorious early 90's Town's average attendance was just over the 3,000 mark, and very quickly dropped to circa 2,000 ish  bumped up by the occasional payday against Wigan and Bradford   

Those gate numbers are a bit iffy. at the Wigan match in 94/95 it stated 6634 attendance.  i sat in the stand at that match [which was full] the enclosure below was full, the popular side was full apart from about last 5 meters at old scoreboard end and well over half the town end was full of Wigan fans.  We all guessed at what attendance would have been considering highest attendance at DP previous was 17741 also against Wigan

So if 6634 is true/accurate then you can get 11107 on the grass bit around the old scoreboard - or we had more crowd than was stated.  Also that year we had 2 other matches well over the 4500 capacity of the FC United style ground. 

Therefore if whoever counted the Wigan attendance counted all the other matches that season  its possible they were all over the 4500 capacity. We used to try and guess all the attendances and were never anywhere near.

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20 hours ago, Death to the Rah Rah's said:

...maybe because neither Town or Reds have averaged gates over 4000 since the 50s !!

Even in the glorious early 90's Town's average attendance was just over the 3,000 mark, and very quickly dropped to circa 2,000 ish  bumped up by the occasional payday against Wigan and Bradford   

You cant just be negative.  Be positive nobody knows where each team will be in a few years.

Reds are playing well lately and Town are improving under a great coach.

I know Reds have about 8 promotions to get up to the top, but Town only need 2 promotions to be in super league.

I know this is very ambitious but its not impossible. Back in 91 we we in the third tier and i never expected that 3 years later we would be in super league but we did it so its not impossible to do it again.

I bet Coach Thorman isnt here and planning to stay in this division.

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The other thing is the difference in cost to add another say 2500 capacity while doing the build is pretty low, especially compared to what it would cost to retrofit 2500 in the future, unless its actually built into the infrastructure for future expansion. So I dont see why we should limit ourselves for other events due to a lowish capacity just because Town and Reds dont currently get those crowds. 

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39 minutes ago, dkw said:

The other thing is the difference in cost to add another say 2500 capacity while doing the build is pretty low, especially compared to what it would cost to retrofit 2500 in the future, unless its actually built into the infrastructure for future expansion. So I dont see why we should limit ourselves for other events due to a lowish capacity just because Town and Reds dont currently get those crowds. 

Well said

Again comparing against the FC United ground the bulk of the cost would be the main stand.

So replacing the main stand at DP and possibly the metal covering for the Town end at a similar or lesser cost would give us all the gains and still keep the 10000 capacity..

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I would guess that they have other plans for derwent park probably to part fund the project, I agree that the capacity needs to be higher probably up to the 8000 mark. Let's hope some progress is made and all the councillors get behind it,word of warning though the mp jenkinson is getting his face amongst it

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The original plan with the new circular looking stadium with capacity 8000 was only 15m if I remember correctly - it was only bumped up 26m to make the offices for Sellafield and NHS [which would have been great income]

Bearing in mind all the rest of the project - what did the stadium part actually cost out of the 15m because the hybrid pitch, landscaping etc all costs money and wouldn't be cheap

The FC United ground with 4400 capacity cost 6.5m with only 1 proper stand and is no comparison to the one we originally were getting at something well below 15m.

I was in favour of this and it looked great very modern looking and catered for everything.

The only negatives to me was parking and  I didn't like the idea of ground level seats which was mention in a previous post.

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23 hours ago, town4me said:

What's to say they wont in the future??  

History says otherwise!

Check back in old programmes and Joe Holidays books where they used to show the attendances and count up how many times in the last 60 years Town have had an attendance over 3500, you'll be surprised how few there are

Would you rather have a ground that had the realistic chance of being 1/2 to 3/4 full on a regular basis with a good atmosphere regardless of what level Town and Reds are playing, or a larger stadium that was 10%-20% of capacity and looked empty (as current DP)?

A smaller capacity wouldn't stop the area getting the very occasional Cumbria v whoever representative game, it would just mean that tickets would be more realistically priced as there would be higher demand for a potential sell out game, but let's be honest here, the area gets one representative game every 4 years or so !

In regards to musical events, they could have those now at either stadium, but they don't, so what makes you think they'll hold them in the future?

I think a 4500-5000 capacity stadium is more than ample for both club's foreseeable needs as it will take a mammoth effort by both clubs to increase their crowds to even 50% of the proposed capacity.

I do share the comments that it would make more sense to develop Derwent Park as its a much bigger area, not prone to flooding etc., but the proposed scheme is linked to redeveloping the area from the sports centre to the current Reds stadium. I'm sure that developing DP would have been considered but for whatever reason Borough Park is their preferred site.

Anyway, time will tell, I really hope this isn't another false dawn and Workington are successful with the government high street scheme which is fundamental in driving this development forward   

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4 hours ago, Death to the Rah Rah's said:

History says otherwise!

Check back in old programmes and Joe Holidays books where they used to show the attendances and count up how many times in the last 60 years Town have had an attendance over 3500, you'll be surprised how few there are

Would you rather have a ground that had the realistic chance of being 1/2 to 3/4 full on a regular basis with a good atmosphere regardless of what level Town and Reds are playing, or a larger stadium that was 10%-20% of capacity and looked empty (as current DP)?

A smaller capacity wouldn't stop the area getting the very occasional Cumbria v whoever representative game, it would just mean that tickets would be more realistically priced as there would be higher demand for a potential sell out game, but let's be honest here, the area gets one representative game every 4 years or so !

In regards to musical events, they could have those now at either stadium, but they don't, so what makes you think they'll hold them in the future?

I think a 4500-5000 capacity stadium is more than ample for both club's foreseeable needs as it will take a mammoth effort by both clubs to increase their crowds to even 50% of the proposed capacity.

I do share the comments that it would make more sense to develop Derwent Park as its a much bigger area, not prone to flooding etc., but the proposed scheme is linked to redeveloping the area from the sports centre to the current Reds stadium. I'm sure that developing DP would have been considered but for whatever reason Borough Park is their preferred site.

Anyway, time will tell, I really hope this isn't another false dawn and Workington are successful with the government high street scheme which is fundamental in driving this development forward   

So it'lll basically just be BP being rebuilt and we'll be playing there too. Any new investment is good but I personally dont like the look of the fc united example. I found watching RL at BP just not the same with the shallow terracing. The project Seems more geared towards the reds IMO.

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Rebuilding reds ground to FC United design is too small.

FC United's ground does not fit with Super league minimum requirements anyway.

according to website Broadhurst Park, home to FC United of Manchester, FC United of Manchester Women - Football Ground Map its capacity is 4400 with 3704 standing - hence 696 seats.

Super league minimum requirements are 5000 with 2000 seats see

RFL set record straight on London’s stadium following promotion – TotalRL.com | Rugby League Express | Rugby League World

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