Chairman Tom Cartledge says he understands fans’ frustrations over the delay to Nottingham Forest’s City Ground redevelopment project.
Almost five years on from the Reds announcing plans to overhaul their stadium and increase capacity, the transformation is yet to get under way. And although Cartledge says the club are not yet in a position to announce a date for work to start, he insists progress is being made.
A central part of Forest’s vision is to knock down and rebuild the Peter Taylor Stand with double the number of seats. Approval was given by Rushcliffe Borough Council in the summer of 2022, but it came with certain conditions needing to be met such as the demolition and relocation of boathouses by the River Trent.
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Cartledge has been involved with the project since its early stages. And he says since being appointed chairman earlier this year he has helped to “accelerate the pace”.
“Every conversation I’ve always had with the ownership is that the City Ground is our home to stay in,” he said in a Q&A with the Nottingham Forest Supporters’ Trust. “We’re here to stay. We’ve been here 125 years, we have no intention of finding locations to move to. The City Ground is our forever home.
“We’ve got to improve it, though. That’s the critical part.
“If you wind the clock back, we started that programme three or four years ago. I was involved from a design perspective by looking at the Peter Taylor Stand. At the time we didn’t understand that Covid-19 was coming around the corner and the economic challenges and everything. The noise that was created at the start, we weren’t able to keep pace with that and deliver the stand in line with the fans’ expectations.
“There has been a lag time, which has frustrated people. I understand that.
“Since I joined (as chairman) a couple of months ago, we have accelerated the pace. People will ask what that means, it means a lot more meetings, a lot more conversations about how we build the stand and working with the local authorities. We’ve got a brilliant relationship with Rushcliffe (Council), who I give huge credit to in terms of how they have supported us on accelerating again, getting the final details across the line.
“This is a significant infrastructure project and it comes with a lot of complexity. That takes time to manage and sort. But I am encouraged that in the last month or two we’ve got significant progress to be able to start to imagine the dates to start the redevelopment.
“What does that redevelopment mean? It means the removal of this stand, and that of course causes a lot of challenges with relocating fans, relocating media, relocating TV gantries and everything else.
“It’s not a quick fix where you could say, OK let’s start at the end of this season or something. It will take time.
“People will say you are being noncommittal on dates. But you have to acknowledge there’s a lot of moving parts to all those conversations I’ve just had about fans and other things we need to move and accommodate within the ground alongside the safety piece. It’s a limited site, there’s not a lot of land around it for building compounds and other things.
“It is going to take a little bit of time to get a date confirmed for when we start. We will talk openly about that with fans when we can.
“But the end game of this is that the stand will develop another 5,000 seats - a combination of seats that people might want to relocate into, different levels and tiers of seating, but an opportunity for an additional 5,000 people to come and watch Premier League football at the City Ground is the intention.”