It’s as if the new stadium are three words that Derren Brown has somehow fashioned into some subconscious trigger causing us to instantly lose the will to live.
If and when this thing is eventually built, it will need to be amazeballs to even register on a lot of fans’ radar.
Jam tomorrow for over a decade can do that to a people.
Tom Collomosse in yesterday’s Evening Standard kinda gazumped me. That’s show business.
But Gladys the Tea Lady and I may be able to add a little more flesh to Tom’s bone.
Before we get stuck into the architectural plans that are HERE and actually begin to interpret them, we need to bear in mind two absolutely crucial issues. Firstly, that Tottenham Hotspur Football Club isn’t simply just redeveloping White Hart Lane for something called …Tottenham Hotspur Football Club.
The second, is that serious questions really do need to be asked of ENIC in terms of where the football side of the business is heading. Even now.
Once the THST have stopped blocking dissenters on social media, once they’ve stopped telling anyone that’ll listen that they’d be terribly upset if Wembley doesn’t happen, then maybe, just maybe, they can begin to open their pitifully parochial minds to what they would probably dub …the big picture.
Tom’s piece in the Standard and his spotting of the XL changing room beneath the East Stand to be was spot on.
But there’s more, far more.
Levy & Co aren’t just talking to movers and shakers in the NFL. They’ve already spoken to them.
If you cast your eye across the plans, this isn’t a punt, this isn’t a ‘build it and they will come’ job.
This is a we’ve done our homework and we’ve done our upmost to make this design as robust and future proof as we can job.
What you are looking at is stadium that will be so good, that the football side of the business (surprise surprise) will get a severe run for it’s money.
The spec of the new design exceeds the needs of a Premier League Football Stadium. Not just by ‘a little bit’, but by a country mile.
In fact, what Levy & Co have got Populus to tee up, is a stadium that in meets UEFA’s exacting highest criteria. A venue that will tick the same boxes as Wembley Stadium.
I repeat, a venue that will tick all the same boxes as Wembley Stadium.
Tom Collomosse says that negotiations with the NFL are taking place. The truth is, they’ve already taken place, and there will be more. You don’t build a venue to accommodate events that aren’t coming. Levy & Co are the most hesitant people you could ever meet.
Beyond the NFL standard dressing room in beneath the East Stand, there are so many other tell tale signs…
We have a large dedicated female locker room. Cheerleaders anyone? Well, there isn’t corresponding male locker room of the same size… The latest adjustments to the proposed stadium plans included changing rooms to cope with 25+ playing personnel.
Why? To match the UEFA criteria.
In keeping with the UEFA 4 star standard, beneath the North Stand we’ll also have a colossal Central Production Kitchen.
Apologies again to the THST, but your arbitration initiative over the size of Monster Munch bags served on the concourses have gone for an all too inevitable burton. We are talking a level of corporate entertainment that will not just be world class, but deliver world class cash into the club’s coffers.
Again, if you you give the THST a tenner, you are a fool. They have only ever been thrown bones that were always going to be conceded anyway. They can barely share with you that which is already in the public domain.
The Central Production Kitchen will be about 3 times the size of the new and increased in size football changing rooms. This is a facility that will be delivering cuisine as per the other UEFA 4 Star standard arenas.
Beneath the West Stand will be media facilities that again completely exceed the requirements of the Premier League. 2 frankly enormous media lounges with bars and a bar food facility. But what is the real eye catcher, is the MOCR.
Dunno what one of those is? Well, that’s completely understandable. People like NASA use them. However such a room has also been used by FIFA, most recently here, in Rio.
Together with 2 TV production studios and parking facilities designed to house 6/12 18 wheelers, this is not, repeat not, just a Premier League football stadium.
How do I feel about it, a bloke that has been soooooooo critical about Levy & Co? Well I still am utterly disgusted by the manner this whole business has been pursued and executed.
Haringey Council are embarked upon a path of social cleansing that almost, but not quite beggars even my belief.
The utterly awful, the desperately unthinking people that have bleated about a new Spurs stadium being the catalyst for regeneration in Haringey got it wrong.
The plan was far bigger, and in an upcoming blog, that the brilliance of MK Dons will be explained.
The old Hotspur’s Half Hour is back. All modesty to one side, it’s thunderous.
