Blog articles might be a little sporadic from me in the next several weeks, most of my active on-line time will be in late evenings and the early hours of am. Good news, no more epic 10,000 word extravaganzas for a while, so happy days for people who like short, snappy blogs that don't choke up valuable time away from surfing porn. Although this one is ye olde slighter bigger than average size edition.
Guest bloggers have been busy with off-line duties too, but they've all checked in, so plenty to come in this summer of World Cup disappointment (it's going to be penalties again) and the usual shenanigans what we have come to love and know as the 'summer transfer window' (Spurs fan up a tree looking into The Lodge, in 3...2...1...).
Anyways, tonight's article is simply this: I love the new revised stadium design (re: Northumberland Dev Project). Official site article here if you've been asleep all day. To quote the sexy key bits:
• A redesign of the Southern area of the site resulting in a stunning new design for the hotel and residential buildings.
• An enlarged public square on a raised podium, which extends from the High Road to Worcester Avenue and connects directly into the Stadium, new Tottenham Hotspur Foundation offices set alongside facilitating even greater community use and activity.
• A high quality environment along the High Road with a new courtyard setting for retained historic buildings to the South and trees, gates and structures in front of the Stadium linking to the existing terrace of historic buildings to the North.
• Grade II listed Warmington House, along with 3 other locally listed buildings with historic links to the Club, to be retained - the Red House, Dispensary and the former White Hart Pub - all to be refurbished and brought back to life.
• Fantastic new Club Megastore with integrated Club museum, ticket office and café.
• Further improvements to the development including a Skybar and roof garden on the adjacent supermarket, linked directly to the Stadium.
• The re-use of the famous Bill Nicholson Gates, ‘Cockerel on the Ball' Clock and ‘Golden Cockerel' statue within the public realm.
Lovely. So basically we are looking to retain some history along with improving on the original design (hotel and residential stuff).
I'm glad we were asked to go away and come back again because if you compare the original design (the one that had no listed buildings left after the proposed rebuild) to the new one, you'll be hard pressed to disagree that it's not been improved on, tenfold.
Original design:
New revised proposed design:
For actual photo close ups of the listed buildings, click on the below links:
http://www.savebritainsheritage.org/pix/articles/tot5.jpg
http://www.savebritainsheritage.org/pix/articles/tot6.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3104/3107773597_b714451612.jpg
Regulars to the Lane will get a better perspective of things seeing the above linked photos. What does make me smile is that these buildings have sat there, some of which are derelict, and nothing has been done - by anyone - to restore them to former or in-fact newly-improved glory. We want to knock them down, and machine says no. Doubtful they would say no to the new plans. Why would they when we are giving them purpose once more?
I could handcuff myself to the gates if things got tasty with the board of directors
Nothing to hate, everything to love about this. Not too shabby of a new Spurs Shop either. For more information on the building which formally had the Cockerel at the front of it (Red House) click here. There's a bit of nostalgia attached (or not so much of since 2008) and retaining the Bill Nick gates along with that removed golden Cockerel, we get a nice nod to the past. Obviously, security must be tight here, on the look out for any cheeky West Ham fans that might drive up the high road at 4am to pay us a visit and leave their calling card for us to choke over whilst we tuck into our morning bowl of corn flakes.
Again, can't believe I didn't hate on the original design more when I first saw it (the hotel part of it).
Kudos to the Bill Nick inclusion too. Mr Tottenham Hotspur deserves this elegant touch for a new era, linking us right back to when this club became a fully fledged giant (before falling into deep sleep again for a while).
Shame there are no multi-millionaire pound companies called Bill Nicholson out there looking to buy the rights to the naming of the new stadium. Because I can't think of a better name for it.
Perhaps we could request the sponsor to be part of a pre-determined template, i.e. The Bill Nicholson 'enter sponsor here' Stadium?
Petition anyone?
Stadium images can all be found in their original form over at the official site.