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Champion Hill: Proposed Ground Redevelopment

Monkeygrinder's Organ said:
Apart from the massive amounts of cash involved I'm not sure the growth potential is there to that degree anyway to be honest. Obviously the growth of the crowds has been amazing - no-one would have ever though the crowd would be straining at the seams of the ground ten years ago, it would have seemed impossible. It's still based on cheap tickets and a piss up though. If you're getting up into 10,000 seater stadiums you're going to be looking at moving up into the lower League levels and also the changes that go with that. Would 3000 people getting in for not much more than a tenner and having a few beers watching the game translate into two or three times that paying £25-30 a go to watch lower league football from a fixed seat with no drinks? I wouldn't think so.
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The whole club and its fanbase has evolved so rapidly over the last 10-12 years it's hard to predict what might happen over the next decade in any given scenario. This time next season we could be playing out an Isthmian League season in mid-table with attendances back to 1,500 in a lower profile league. On the other hand we could be chasing promotion to the National Division with every game a 3 000+ sell out.

Wimbledon was historically a smaller club than ours until they switched to the Southern League around 60 years ago. I went to Plough Lane a few times a season when they were in the Fourth Division 40 years ago and they were only getting 2,000-2,500. The reformed club was getting similar crowds in the Isthmian League at Kingsmeadow 15 years ago, they were regularly selling out at just under 5,000 when they got into the Football League, and now they're up to 9,000 or so at the new Plough Lane. I'm sure we'd lose some supporters if that happened but my impression is there's already been a fair amount of churn over the past decade, and promotion to higher leagues would attract further new waves of interest.
 
Monkeygrinder's Organ said:
Apart from the massive amounts of cash involved I'm not sure the growth potential is there to that degree anyway to be honest. Obviously the growth of the crowds has been amazing - no-one would have ever though the crowd would be straining at the seams of the ground ten years ago, it would have seemed impossible. It's still based on cheap tickets and a piss up though. If you're getting up into 10,000 seater stadiums you're going to be looking at moving up into the lower League levels and also the changes that go with that. Would 3000 people getting in for not much more than a tenner and having a few beers watching the game translate into two or three times that paying £25-30 a go to watch lower league football from a fixed seat with no drinks? I wouldn't think so.
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Why not? The club is perfectly located in terms of proximity to central London and a large, growing local population of people with a bit of income to spend. If other clubs around London like Leyton Orient, Wimbledon and Barnet have been able to have a decent crack at sustaining league football in bigger/better stadiums, why couldn't a club based in Dulwich do the same? I do agree with you, though, that there would have to be a huge shift in what the matchday experience and culture is (i.e. it would no longer be about low ticket prices, standing on terracing and having a booze). Whether people would actually want that to happen would be a huge question, but it's something a lot of clubs have been through.

Sluxy I agree with the main gist of your post and have raised a similar point on here in the past. As far as I can tell, there's basically no opportunity for expansion at all with the new stadium. But what would you suggest is the solution? As far as I can tell the club basically has its back against the wall here and it's a choice of take this new stadium (which seems a bit inadequate, in all honesty) or have no stadium at all.
 
blueheaven..... I certainly don't have any other solutions. I'm clearly late to the show and do not understand fully how the club ended up in this tenuous position. I think that this is probably DHFC's best (only) option!! As I said in my original post, maybe that's not too bad? - a brand new shiny facility with capacity for 4000, but it will never be more than that!! Interestingly I've since read the planning statement for the application by Lichfield and Partners planning consultants - Page 1 Executive Summary.......The current stadium clearly does not meet the Club’s requirements, nor does it provide a base for future expansion of the Club......one thing is certain, future expansion of the club will be impossible with the proposed development (its funny they didn't mention that in their executive summary 😉). By the way, has anyone else noticed that the proposed main stand/club facilities will be nicely facing the sun at 3-5pm - don't get me wrong, I think its probably the only solution but is certainly a downside to the need to reorientate the ground by 90 degrees!

To all intents and purposes, the deal is already done, planning has already been granted. This current application is the last piece of the (legal) jigsaw puzzle to allow the development to proceed and it would appear that all the stakeholders want this to happen (ie The land owner, DHFC and Southwark council). Assuming this now passes through it will be interesting to see how things pan out.

I am guessing that the current land owner (Greendale Property Company Limited) may just want 'out' and will sell the site to recoup their money - I suspect that there is already a deal in place and awaiting this final consent?
 
I am probably misreading this but just clicked on the Southwark planning applications as I was aware the extended consultancy period was over. Its saying decision has been made and application agreed. Good news if true. It may have been covered in the programme yesterday but couldn't get one .
 
GOP said:
Is there a family enclosure planned for the new ground?
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As far as I'm aware there's no sort of "enclosure" planned within the new ground. It will have a main stand with seats on one side and terraces on the other 3 sides with unrestricted access for everyone, much the same as the current ground but with a slightly larger capacity and better sightlines.
 
GOP said:
A designated area for families. Other clubs have them. Is it such an outrageous question?
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I'm not sure there's any real need for it at a non-league ground. There will be a large stand with seating, so much like now you'd imagine most families with young children would gravitate there, so it'd become a quasi family area by default (much like now).

Although of course, parents also have the option to surrender their children to the Rabble and allow them to be co-parented by the ground's resident feral drunks. They usually turn out alright.
 
GOP said:
A designated area for families. Other clubs have them. Is it such an outrageous question?
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Seems an entirely fair question. Particularly if we want to attract the next gen of fans, plus the part of our community that doesn’t want to drink booze at a game. Been successful at the Oval (different context but obvs nearby), so a good idea to copy across to New Champion Hill.
 
SimonH23 said:
Seems an entirely fair question. Particularly if we want to attract the next gen of fans, plus the part of our community that doesn’t want to drink booze at a game. Been successful at the Oval (different context but obvs nearby), so a good idea to copy across to New Champion Hill.
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But The Oval is an all seater ground with a capacity of 28,000. Our new ground will be one seventh that size and mostly standing terraces. It's going to have a really tight footprint, and ideally would be twice the size, so I'm not sure about the practicalities of having separate areas for different demographics. We'll need to plan for possible segregation for some matches, and maybe separate ticketing for the main stand as it is.
 
SimonH23 said:
Seems an entirely fair question. Particularly if we want to attract the next gen of fans, plus the part of our community that doesn’t want to drink booze at a game. Been successful at the Oval (different context but obvs nearby), so a good idea to copy across to New Champion Hill.
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What does a "designated area for families" contain that makes it different from a normal area? And what currently existing problem is it solving?

Frankly, we seem to do a perfectly good job of attracting the next generation of fans already (particularly teenagers, who I'm sure would rather gouge their own eyes out than be forced into some kind of "family enclosure").
 
That is the very centre of the old fortified town, and Dubrovnik itself is a city of ~40,000 people, so not really a great comparison.
A better example would be Berlin. Here's a couple of blocks of Schillerkiez, a neighbourhood 5.5km away from Alexanderplatz (Champion Hill is 5.5km from Trafalgar Square)

1707306030023.png

These are all 5-6 story courtyard apartment blocks, very similar in scale to the East Dulwich estate over the road, but with no gaps and built up to the road instead of sitting back behind 5m of useless and unused grass. One of them has a Lidl on the ground floor that actually extends a decent way back from the street; it's not a "Sainsburys Local" scale supermarket.

1707307018675.png

Berlin does have huge megamarkets with surface car parking, but they're on the outskirts.
 
edcraw said:
This guy’s got a good point.

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Not really. 1,000 homes crammed in with no green space in an area roughly the size of 2 small football grounds, and we can't see what surrounds it. There must be a similar number of homes on two estates bordering the Sainsbury's/DHFC site, as well as open green space. Does Dubrovnik not have any shops or other amenities? You can't just build more homes with no other infrastructure. Where would all children from 1,000 additional families go to school? Where's the health care provision for 1,000 additional families?

Having said that, the Sainsbury's car park seems larger than necessary and most of the spaces in the part furthest from the shop are usually empty. I can't recall the source but I recently read that 61% of Southwark households don't own a car. The motoring lobby is very strong and it feels like a minority of people (i.e. motorists) get preferential treatment.
 
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