Can The Aviva be completed/made bigger?

Gary McKay wrote: Yes Eircom Park was correctly scrapped by Delaney because it would put the FAI in serious debt for years !!!

Was he involved back then? It was Bernard O'Brien's baby and Bertie squashed it.

They should have dug down to a level where the highest current part of the stadium would come up to the level of the North stand.

t_rAndy wrote: Makes you a bit sick when you see the millennium stadium was built for 125m pounds and is an awesome stadium with huge capacity and retractable roof whereas landsdowne cost 3 times that and has an unfinished feel about it. I'm glad we didn't build the Bertie bowl which might have been a nice stadium but it was all purpose so would have been a running track or huge pitch to accomadate GAA, wouldn't have worked. What probably would have worked best in terms of the stadium itself was Eircom Park. That was going to be a 45,000 seater stadium I think. It was being talked about around the time Wales were building millennium stadium and if I rmemeber the cost was not so high. They'd be no doubt be making money off it now anyway! What was the main reason it fell through?

Typical that in Ireland when we finally got our sh1t together to build a stadium, we did so right at the peak of a boom yet when it came to selling tickets our glorious leader turned down a third party offer that would have cleared the debt in one fell swoop because he thought he could make an extra 40 or 50 million selling them himself. Right when the arse fell out of the economy.

Eircom Park would have been built long before then only for Bertie Ahern putting every obstacle possibly in its way so he could get the FAI on board his vanity project. He even went to the length of throwing circa 40 million unprompted to the GAA just before an initial vote on the foreign sports ban in Croker when the FAI were looking to move bigger attendance games there. Needless to say the extra few bob prevented the motion being passed on that occasion
I'm certain Eircom Park debt would be less than the Lansdowne debt at this stage.

The original plan for Lansdowne was to turn the pitch 90 degrees like the did with the Millennium but a small number of residents wouldn't sell up which meant they had to build with a restricted north end. The stadium is crap down that end due to that. It looks decent from the outside but I'm not a fan. That said, view is fine from where I stand in the SS, No better or worse from behind the goal in anywhere else I've ever gone to games in. View from the north is awful due to the tiny number of rows.

kimbap wrote: Charlton's Child wrote: To answer the question yes the north end could be completed to make a full bowl . The way stadiums are designed in the last ten years is so that expanding capacity can be done so with very little work required to the existing structure . To complete the bowl shape you'd probable need 12 months . But a bit like the same situation as Croke park great idea , completely possible but very likely to never happen Not going to get into in on here  again as i think its in a thread from a few years ago but it's not financially feasible in CP.Also the overall capacity would be 83k (assuming they built the hill the same as the canal) it's current capacity is 82,300.Some people talk awful sh1te on here.

The hill would remain as is with the removal of the big screen and the upper tier section completed to make the bowl . This would push the capacity up to 90,000. To do this you would need to by the houses behind the hill with the train line incorporated into the stand similar to what's at landsdown road now . Yea financially it wouldn't be cheap but it's not like the gaa are short of a few quid .

kimbap wrote: Charlton's Child wrote: To answer the question yes the north end could be completed to make a full bowl . The way stadiums are designed in the last ten years is so that expanding capacity can be done so with very little work required to the existing structure . To complete the bowl shape you'd probable need 12 months . But a bit like the same situation as Croke park great idea , completely possible but very likely to never happen Not going to get into in on here  again as i think its in a thread from a few years ago but it's not financially feasible in CP.Also the overall capacity would be 83k (assuming they built the hill the same as the canal) it's current capacity is 82,300.Some people talk awful sh1te on here.

Charlton's Child wrote: To answer the question yes the north end could be completed to make a full bowl . The way stadiums are designed in the last ten years is so that expanding capacity can be done so with very little work required to the existing structure . To complete the bowl shape you'd probable need 12 months . But a bit like the same situation as Croke park great idea , completely possible but very likely to never happen

Not going to get into in on here  again as i think its in a thread from a few years ago but it's not financially feasible in CP.Also the overall capacity would be 83k (assuming they built the hill the same as the canal) it's current capacity is 82,300.Some people talk awful sh1te on here.

Bitored wrote: Denis Irwin wrote: It more or less is. The supposed "Joint Ownership" is only for 50 years then it reverts to the full ownership of the IRFU What? Why would the FAI put themselves 50million in the hole? They'll just about have paid off the debt when the IRFU get it back

Im shocked that you didnt know this.

Why would they want to do that though? The setup works, they have a good relationship with the IRFU and have halved the risk.

Charlton's Child wrote: KING-CON wrote: Shoco wrote: Bitored wrote: Denis Irwin wrote: It more or less is. The supposed "Joint Ownership" is only for 50 years then it reverts to the full ownership of the IRFU What? Why would the FAI put themselves 50million in the hole? They'll just about have paid off the debt when the IRFU get it back Because the IRFU owned the land that the stadium was to be built on, and continue to do so Unlike its predecessor, which was solely owned by the IRFU, the current stadium is controlled by the IRFU and the FAI through a 50:50 joint venture known as the Lansdowne Road Stadium Development Company (LRSDC). The joint venture has a 60-year lease on the stadium; on expiry the stadium will return to the exclusive ownership of the IRFU.  By the time this happens it will be time for the ground to be re-developed again and the cycle will start all over again i imagine

Edited by KING-CON - 21 Oct 2015 at 5:43pm