Amex Stadium expansion: Albion confirm where 1,750 new seats are going
Brighton have submitted a planning statement which reveals a raft of proposed changes for the Amex Stadium, including where 1,750 new seats are going as part of an expansion which will take the capacity up to 32,500.
With the Albion regularly selling out since promotion to the Premier League, adding further capacity to the stadium has been something which fans have long talked about.
Because of the way that the ground was built, changes to the structure to increase the number of seats are near-on impossible.
Paul Barber spoke about this at last August’s Fans Forum, before adding that the club were looking at ways to increase the capacity by a small amount through packing seats into various existing spaces.
The overall aim would be to allow the stadium to host England senior international in the future. To do so, a ground must hold over 32,000.
The good news is that the Albion have now found a way to do that. The bad news – if you are a supporter who was hoping to take advantage of an increase in capacity to watch more regularly – is that the expansion at the Amex Stadium appears as though is is going to focus largely on premium hospitality seats.
Here’s what the planning documents tell us about the £4.31 million Amex Stadium expansion.
The bulk of the capacity increase is going to come from turning the existing club offices at the back of the North Stand into a new hospitality lounge.
This will be similar to the Heineken Lounge at the south end of the ground, with a shelf-like row of seats being built above the North Stand to cater for those who can afford access to the lounge.
The new seats will extend from the current control box at the west end of the North Stand right the way along to the big screen, which will subsequently be moved slightly to the east, so that it hangs above Block N1H rather than its current position above N1G.
According to the planning documents, this new area is to be called the Northern Lights lounge and is going to set Tony Bloom back £2.98 million.
By replacing a lot of the grey at the back of the North Stand, it will hopefully make the area appear less like an office block and more like a football stadium.
Also boosting the expansion of the Amex Stadium will be another new hospitality lounge. This one is going in the north east corner, next to the newly relocated big screen and where the current American Express Community Stadium branding is.
The planning documents describe this lounge as “matching the south east corner”, so we already know what this will look like – a new corporate box built into the back of the stand above the existing terrace and with a balcony of seats attached to the front. This new hospitality lounge will cost £1.24 million to construct.
The remainder of the new seats are going to come through what the planning documents describe as “filling in existing gaps in the stadium.”
We’ve absolutely no idea where these are going to go, but we do know that it’s going to cost £78,450 to complete the work.
Barber has often said that the thing he gets emailed most about by Brighton fans is the lack of external toilets. You can enjoy a beer and a burger on the concourse outside the stadium before a game, but if you need a piss then you’re in a world of issues.
Well, not any more. The documents reveal that the Albion are to demolish the existing facilities in the north west corner – including the popular bandstand – and replace them with newly built ones – including toilets.
With the bandstand being removed, entertainment will instead be provided by a new external big screen which will be used for “entertainment and information purposes”.
At the opposite end of the stadium, the planning documents also reveal that a new set of stairs will be constructed to take supporters to and from the coach park.
The number of supporters travelling to the stadium by coach and thus needing access to the coach park has increased since the Albion’s promotion to the Premier League.
Much of that is to do with more home supporters travelling through the excellent Seagulls Travel because of the number of stupid kick off times enforced by television coverage.
The away end is also sold out every week (unless Burnley are in town), which naturally leads to more coaches full of visiting supporters.
As a result, the current set of steps to the coach park has become a real bottleneck. Doubling the capacity should alleviate this, making it much easier for supporters to get away from the stadium after games.
And the boring bit – to make move for the expansion above the North Stand, the Amex Stadium will be getting a new set of offices.
The planning application for these will follow at a later dater so the location is yet unknown, but early front runners include a new building behind the East Stand where the ill-fated hotel was proposed.
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