Initially, the drawings saw the new control room being permanently sited towards the very front of the top left-hand side of the grandstand (as looked at from the pitch). On paper, this looked good, but when you started to think through how it would work, and how it would affect our fans seated around it, it made less sense.
Indeed, the seats to the right of the new control room would not ever have been able to have been used, given that supporters sitting in that area could not see the Barn Park goalmouth because of the front of the control room being flush with the front of the grandstand. Stadia’s’ seminal rulebook – the Green Guide – is very clear on the ability to sell (or not sell) restricted view seating.
Although the OCD in me loved the proposed better symmetry of the extended grandstand, not only did it fail to provide a single extra ‘prime view’ seat, it actually ended up blocking the sightlines of a currently unaffected area.
As such, plans had to change and the expensive extension of the grandstand roof over a void seemed a folly that would badly compromise future design.
As you now know, we have placed a temporary control room on the terrace between the grandstand and the Devonport End, and left the length of the grandstand as it currently is, to allow for increasing the number of seats upstairs in the old gal as and when we complete the corners of the ground
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