The New Stadium

brinyhoof

I, for one, am astonished Greig Box Turnbull’s Fortitude Communications has been awarded the contract to deliver strategic communications for OUFC’s new stadium project.

Rachhfost

brinyhoof

I don’t know anything about Fortitude and only know of Greig due to his previous links to oufc. Are you astonished in a good or not so good way? This is existential so anything that risks a positive outcome brings me out into hives.

brinyhoof

Rachhfost GBT is vice-chair of trustees for OU In The Community and a decent fella as far as I know. I was just being sarcastic about the contract being awarded to someone who is involved so closely with the club.

JonnyBiscuits

IMO the club needs an in-house senior communications leader who has the trust and authority to advise and challenge the CEO and board and who has ownership and oversight of all aspects of the club’s communications, including day-to-day social media, matchday comms & programmes, branding and marketing, communications from the board, and the stadium project. Everything is too fractured and inconsistent at the moment, and IMO employing an external consultant (even one connected to the club) to do the stadium comms will just exacerbate that.

JonnyBiscuits

And thus ends my LinkedIn essay.

JonnyBiscuits

Anyway, new bit on the stad on the website: https://www.oufc.co.uk/news/2024/february/jon-clarke-interview/

They’ve wrapped it in promotional waffle, but it’s significant that they’ve broken cover on the traffic issue outlined in this thread earlier, and have now discussed the possibility of a bridge again for the first time since the imagery/designs/video were first published.

Feasibility studies have concluded that over time 90% of supporters coming to the new stadium will be able to arrive via active travel. We are working on additional measures to further enhance connectivity, including a pedestrian bridge over Oxford Road. We have made a commitment for the bridge to be fully explored and our project team is looking at this as we speak.

Alongside this, we’ve worked extensively with Oxfordshire County Council’s Highways team to establish a traffic management plan that will limit matchday impact on the local area. Not many stadiums are able to boast such excellent public transport links given Oxford Parkway is just a few hundred metres from the site. The proposed stadium would therefore offer significantly higher levels of sustainable travel than most UK clubs are able to.

brinyhoof

Another update. But I can’t fathom why the club would need to boil 3 million 3-litre kettles per year. Bad ants problem?

https://www.oufc.co.uk/news/2024/february/oxford-united-all-electric-stadium/

JonnyBiscuits

brinyhoof To thaw out the pitch because the air source heat pumps can’t keep the undersoil heating going?

brinyhoof

JonnyBiscuits BINGO!

JonnyBiscuits

So what happens if the stadium gets approval but the bridge doesn’t?

TrevorAylottsHeadband

JonnyBiscuits Then the club won’t be able to ‘further enhance connectivity’ which seems to be an odd way of saying ‘ensure fans can cross the road safely’.

JonnyBiscuits

TrevorAylottsHeadband Or rather “find a different dangerous way of crossing the road with several thousand other supporters”.

TrevorAylottsHeadband

Does anybody have any idea how long it takes from an application being submitted to it actually appearing on the CDC planning website?

JonnyBiscuits

TrevorAylottsHeadband Validating a planning application, particularly a complex one like this, can take a while. It can also be affected by very basic things like The Person Who Validates Major Applications being on leave. Planning departments in local authorities are a bit screwed at the moment.

@brinyhoof was saying that even residential applications are tending a week or two at the moment.

It will be quicker if Ridge have provided everything they need to. One of the main causes of delay is when the application doesn’t included everything it needs to. Though there’s no suggestion we’re at that point yet.

brinyhoof

JonnyBiscuits my guess is that discussions with CDC have been going on for quite a long time (pre-app guidance, etc) so my hope is that there will be no issues with what has been submitted. That said, its still the bleedin’ council and the levels of bureaucracy are ridiculous even if you just fancy a porch.

CDC also know how heavily scrutinised this application will be so will be at pains to ensure everything is correct and their backsides are covered.

JonnyBiscuits

I had a conversation with the comms manager at CDC yesterday. Despite my warnings, he seems completely oblivious to what’s going on and the level of scrutiny they’ll be under. He initially waved it away because (for good reasons) councils don’t tend to talk publicly about planning applications while they’re ongoing. I did point out to him that they’re going to need to make sure everyone understands the timescales of these things, and how the process works, and what kinds of things can cause delays, because if they just shut up shop and say “It will be going to Planning Committee in due course” and then it takes months they’re gonna get rinsed, whether that’s fair or not.

The county council also warned him about a certain campaign group and their behaviours, which were apparently… erm… challenging.

TrevorAylottsHeadband

IT’S HAPPENING!!

https://planningregister.cherwell.gov.uk/Planning/Display/24%2F00539%2FF

JonnyBiscuits

Don’t like the away fans being given seats at the side of the pitch, that’s where the best views are - we should stick them in a bin round the back or whatever.

TrevorAylottsHeadband

The away fans’ section does seem to be pretty large and, looking at the position of the turnstiles, toilets etc, doesn’t appear to be scaleable. That seems like a step backwards from what we currently have in the North Stand where the dividing line can be moved to cater for, e.g., larger cup allocations.

JonnyBiscuits

TrevorAylottsHeadband there appears to be a Zone 1 and a Zone 2 for away fans, so my reading of it is that Zone 1 would be the regular allocation, and you could add Zone 2 as the expanded allocation.

So actually it looks like we’re giving them a corner with the possibility of it being expanded to take about a quarter of one side of the pitch, which doesn’t seem so bad.

Gingermoods

TrevorAylottsHeadband maybe Mick Brown designed the away end.

TrevorAylottsHeadband

JonnyBiscuits Looking at it again, it does seem like that with the turnstiles on the east side, there are two ever so slighty apart from the other four which could be where the divide is for the full allocation, with the other divide being between the away turnstiles and female toilets… hard to tell though!

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