Olly

Been on the news all morning that the replacement Wembley stadium has the green light. Cost to the FA and the government- seven hundered and fifty million pounds. Come off it.

Would be interesting to know how much is actually going into the cost of the build, and how much is been trousered by the racketeers. Didn't the Japanese build 9 new stadia for not much more?

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

It's "rip-off Britain" again m8.
If you really want to see one that'll make your eyes water, read "Railway World" about how much the new Railtrack are charging to up grade the West coast main line.
The new stadium should have been at the NEC anyway.
Alcazar

seejay555

Interesting article on page 45 of Part 2 of the Times today. The building costs are capped at £452 million!! The Architects are getting £29 million (nice work if you can get it

ronny555

Mr seejay - what do u do for a living.

I use to work for the architects which are doing Wembley. I was based on site for 2 years at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.

When you consider the size of team they will have and the length of time to carry out all the detailing. - £29million is not that great.

Builders do not build from fancy images.

CrisPDuk

Does this include the amount already trousered by Ken Bates to bail Chelsea out (allegedly)

Alcazar, they should be building it half way down the east lancs road actually mate, the cup spends most of it's time at one end or the other

seejay555

ronny,
I solicit - why do you ask?
£29m still seems a lot of money to me, even for designing and detailing a stadium. It's not as if it's rocket science and you would guess that Foster and his crowd have done similar schemes before. Assuming that Foster charges an average hourly rate of £200 (and I know his will be a lot more, but his underlings will be less), then the £29m buys you 145000 man hours or 14500 man days assuming a ten-hour day. That's the equivalent of 39 or 40 people working full-time on this project for 365 days. Doesn't seem like a bad return from where I'm sitting??

super_si

New Elland roads only £50m!!

[Edited by super_si - 9/25/2002 1:39:53 PM]

Dr Hu

Remember that's 'Three Quarters of a BILLION pounds'

WTF is going on?????????

Bajie

Remember, the 750m figure is for the complete venture, not just the building of the stadium which is estimated at 300-350m.
Birmingham argued that their stadium was circa 350m but did not advertise other cost such as traffic infrastructure etc.
Brent Council refused planning permission point blank if there was no sensible plan for getting people to and from the stadium safely.

And yes 750m is a whole heap of cash.

Also the design of the stadium is over three years old so the architects may be called in again, so thats 779m

STi wanna Subaru

iTrader: (1)

I've seen the plans and we are looking at the Curtain wall elements of the project. Lets just say that No company I know of would be able to offer a suitable system as standard that would achieve what the architects want. We have put forward some proposals which are bespoke and therefore will cost a whole lot more than any of our standard curtain wall systems. If this is echoed throughout the whole project then this is why it is costing so much.

DavidRB

Now, if we had a sensible government, we could have used the 1 billion pounds that we squandered on a plastic tent that lasted a year and spent it on a new stadium instead. But we don't.

Funkii Munkii

The Stadium of light cost £42m if I remember rightly and that holds 50,000, marble halls and mahogany everywhere, what are they constructing Wembley out of??

And to have a capacity of 90,000 is a joke Imagine a Man U v Arsenal final as things stand now they could get 110,000, when the **** build their new stadium they will no doubt fill it with 60,000 + which would then make a Man U v Arsenal final around 150,000, More and more people are watching footy and sport in general in this country and the national stadium will only be 90,000, it should be 120,000 minimum, people have taken the cream off the top of this and should be doing time.

As a local I would like to know what they will do about the infrastructure because there isnt any room for new roads around wembley, unless they are going to buy whole swathes of streets and demolish them and then it certainly would cost a lot more than £750m.

Dave

Bajie

Funki
You seen what used to be Chalk Hill Estate recently ...

If they redeveloped what surrounds Wembley would that really be a bad thing?

Funkii Munkii

Bajie

Fair point, a lot of that area needs bulldozing Especially the otherside of the N Circ Stonebridge park

Dave

Olly

Off on a tangent here. £29 million for the architects. Cheap or expensive?

STI Wanna: sounds like a typical architect/designer thing. Draw out some fancy design that looks great on paper, yet is impossible to build. So to achieve the design, go bespoke. Bespoke costs cash: I should know, I'm in the game.

So the architects then justify their £29m or whatever, by keeping them in work on site in re-designing the whole thing from ground up until the last tile is laid.

People go to Wembley to watch the game. How many footy fans go to a stadium to admire the bespoke curtain walls, or the brass bog chain in the gents? A plastic seat and a pie stand is all that is required. So what is the need?

And if the architechts are getting £29m, where does the rest of the £720m go? We have 2 season tickets in the North Stand of Old Trafford. Certainly nothing fancy there. Common reds, exposed unplastered concrete blocks, fabricated standard steel staircases and sections. Its all you need. Why all the fancy pants stuff?

In an ideal world, the final plans should be laid to rest with everyone happy upon commencement of build, and should never need to be altered again. But it ain't an ideal world. Hence the team of x number of full time blokes required on site continually altering the plans from impossible to practical.

Could understand it if the team were re-vamping Wembley, working to constraints. But on a new build, things should be far, far simpler.

Sad thing is, the one part that actually matters (the pitch) will probably cost tuppence-hapenny.

seejay555

I agree - to a point. You can throw any number of buzz-words at this - "high profile", "flagship", "state-of-the-art" might be just a few - but at the end of the day it's a football stadium (with a bit of athletics thrown in now and again). Having said that, Wembley was such a ****-hole that I would expect something better than the ordinary. It doesn't have to be gold-plated though as long as it makes the experience slightly more comfortable than a trip to most other decent grounds. What I can't get my head round is why, if there isn't going to be any significant infrastructure within that estimated cost (and we all know it will be at least 10% more than the quoted figures), the costs are so much more than anything comparable. The Millenium Stadium at Cardiff was completed for about £150 million tops. Can anyone explain?

boomer

The lawyers and other legal bods have already soaked up over EIGHTY MILLION POUNDS in expenses, and the new stadium agreement hasn't even been signed yet (for some reason it has slipped a few days)!

Someone, (or more likely some-several) is making a packet out of this

mb

super_si

Std de lights is 48,000

go every game

CrisPDuk

Just so you all are aware, Olly is a fully paid up member of the Prawn Sandwich Brigade two years ago he hated football

ronny555

seejay.

Man Hours? - not on your calculations

More likely to be 40-50 men(women) between 2-3 years.

ronny555

Olly.

If we all took your attitude.

We would all still be living in mud huts.

In the UK we are 10 years behind Europe with design and the use
of new materails.

Why do all house builders insist on using brick/block???

Schemes like Wembley will have a certain element of Bespoke design, but in order for these to become more main-stream, it first has to be developed.

Bajie

I grew up around Stonebridge Park near the station!
Funny how when you revisit old areas and see what they are like now.

Olly

Not my way of thinking. I'm all in favour of new ideas, the world wouldn't turn without them.

I just live in the world of common sense.

So why develop new (and therefore unproven) building techniques and ideas on a £750m guinea pig? Wouldn't that be rather expensive when the some of the new ideas doesnt work in practice? Which they won't.

Wouldn't tried and tested methods be easier and therefore cheaper? Therefore the government (ie the taxpayer) would have a smaller bill to pick up?

Whats wrong with bricks and blocks? Outdated? Maybe. Proven? Of course. Would you live in a modern, timber or steel framed creaky box with brick faces and dry lined walls? The ones that sway and creak in the wind, and where you can hear the person in the next room cough? Plenty do. I wouldn't.

Have to agree that the building game has to change more in line with Europe though, where most building labour is semi-skilled. As good skilled labour these days is almost non-existant in the UK nowadays, it's the only way to go.

[Edited by Olly - 9/27/2002 1:30:15 PM]

GazP

Should have been built outside of London, somewhere like Birmingham, the whole thing has been a farce.

Jay m A

iTrader: (2)

Well I'd do it for £600m, I'll only take a 0.5% profit margin...

Wurzel

iTrader: (1)

Just thing, the German LB bank is stumping up 400 million quid for this masterpiece, more than 50% of the total cost, you know what this means don't you??? It is a bit sad to think that the Germans will own over half of the English National Stadium

ronny555

Quote:

Would you live in a modern, timber or steel framed creaky box with brick faces and dry lined walls? The ones that sway and creak in the wind, and where you can hear the person in the next room cough? Plenty do. I wouldn't.

Yes I would - If specified/detailed correctly by the architect.

Unfortunalty you have described the problems with house builders - no design/specification concerns - all cost concerns.

That why new houses creak and you can hear people next door.

ronny555

By the way - the building cost of Wembley is £375 million.

Land costs and professional fees - increase this baby upto the £750 million total cost.

14,500rpm

don't they already own the sodding land?

i personally don't see why i should have to contribute (as a tax payer) to a bloody football stadium anyway.