Work on redeveloping Elland Road should give Leeds United a stadium more befitting of a vibrant regional capital and its team. Construction projects are very reliant on materials and specialists turning up on time, and often they don’t, but the Leeds work has a special plus (see below).
My stepdaughter undertook design work on the new Tottenham Hotspur stadium and upgrading a stadium in situ is no easy task. She more usually works on venues such as airports and they present challenges, but of a different kind. There are not that many people who specialise in football stadiums.
On May 17th, hours after full time in the final home game of last season, the builders moved in at Elland Road. The redevelopment of the John Charles Stand, which will take its capacity from around 8,000 to more than 17,500 seats, was underway, and the clock has been ticking. The overall capacity will be 53,000 when the work is finished.
The Bremner Suite has been bulldozed and cleared from the site, but the suites that remain inside the stand have been repurposed to ensure hospitality is preserved for matchgoers. The Jack Charlton Suite, which served as the players’ lounge, has been turned into the away dressing room.
The removal of the Bremner Suite and the old away dressing rooms has made space for a new corridor, which is central to making this all work.
As work continues behind the hoardings, the corridor will eventually become a tunnel, most likely next season, as a new structure rises to connect with the existing stand. This corridor connects hospitality with the two-storey marquee to the north of the ground, away fans with the 25-coach park created on Fullerton Park and the players with their dressing rooms.
The extra week allowed by the Premier League and Carabao Cup draw has been priceless for Keith Whitmore, director at Rise, the property development firm running this project.
Lessons of the past have been taken into account on this project. Old and slow turnstiles have been replaced with high-speed alternatives in the John Charles Stand, while _The Athletic_ spies a power generator the size of a shipping container on its walk around.
It is there as a backup generator, should any aspect of the electrics fail during the build. It could run the whole stadium if necessary and, helpfully, will ensure there is no repeat of the power failure in October 2022, when a Premier League match with Arsenal was delayed for 40 minutes because a momentary power cut crippled the VAR system referees need.
Problems, inevitably, emerged when the demolition got underway in May. When the Bremner Suite, which is best described as a permanent annexe attached to the original stand, was destroyed, thousands of wires from decades of use were left exposed.
Arguably the most impressive aspect of this push to get ready for Sunday lies inside the hospitality marquee. This is a temporary structure, but neither feels like nor looks like it.
The Bremner, Hunter and Radebe suites have been moved into this building, which preserves, if not improves on, the quality and comfort of what came before inside the stadium. Tony Armstrong, stadium development director, acknowledges the building is so robust that it may well be repurposed for something else in the future.
A key aspect in the push for the finish line has been the passion and commitment of Leeds fans in the workforce. This is more than just another building project for them.
Armstrong concedes supporters may not see anything new in the sky until the end of the season, but that does not mean work is not continuing at pace.