Post season stadium news

Date: Wednesday 5th May 2010, by Tynesider

Both Gateshead Chairman Graham Wood and Vice-Chairman Brian Waites appeared on NE1FM's Grassroots Sports Show to talk everything Gateshead FC. Included in the two hour chat was the latest details on the new stadium.

Gateshead's proposed new stadium on Prince Consort Road won't be arriving as quickly as all Heed fans had hoped. The current position is that the club are close to finalising the planning application, with planning consultants and the architects working on this. The delay has been due to various reasons with the most recent being that the planners requested the addition of a visual impact survey.

The timescale once the planning application has been submitted (assuming everything goes through smoothly) is now 16 weeks, with the hope of submitting the application around the end of June/beginning of July to start building in October 2010. With an estimated 9 month construction phase, completion at the earliest would be towards the end of July 2011, meaning it would likely be too tight a timescale to move in for the start of the 2011/2012 season. At this point it's unsure whether the club would opt to move in halfway through the 2011/12 campaign (upon completeion) or look to move in for the start of the 2012/2013 season, with the stated reason being that moving in part-way through a season doesn't have the same grand impact it does for the beginning of a new season (Big stadium opening match in pre-season).

The initial public consutation back in October 2009 returned 77% of local residents who attended in favour of the new ground, but the club also listened to those against and have altered their plans accordingly, such as moving the Main Stand to the East side of the ground away from the houses. The Main Stand (East/PCR side), will have four floors with the ground floor being almost entirely for use by the football club. The first floor will be offices and conference rooms and the second and third floors will be the lettable business space. The types of businesses they've been in discussions with for the top two floors are mainly medical related, discussions have been held with a lot of the GP practices around the area (20 different GPs being interested), along with opticians, dentists and cryogenics businesses. The club also intend to donate space for community use too.

Away fans will be situated in the South Stand, with a small proportion of away seats being available in the south side of the West Stand. This means the clothesline fans will be moved to the North Stand of the new ground, that's the end next to the bowling green nearest the Tyne & Gateshead Metro Interchange.

With both the East (Main) Stand and West Stand now seated, leaving the North and South Stands as terraces, the total capacity of the new ground will be 7,856.

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Post season stadium news