PLANS have been unveiled for Worcester City Football Club’s new stadium.
The exhibition at the Worcester Whitehouse Hotel gave the public their first glimpse of the stadium at Nunnery Way in Worcester.
The artist’s impressions showed the £5 million stadium which will form part of a £30 million project led by regeneration specialists St Modwen.
The stadium will form the centrepiece of a development that is set to include a health and fitness centre, a new hotel with up to 65 bedrooms, a restaurant, a pub and car and motorcycle showrooms.
Football bosses hope the stadium will have a capacity of 6,120 with potential to increase this to 10,000 in future.
The new stadium will be ready for the 2010/11 season, subject to planning permission being granted.
Club chairman Dave Boddy also revealed plans for 200 car parking spaces dedicated to the club. Subject to planning permission being granted, there will be about 750 spaces across the whole site.
There are just 24 spaces at the club’s current home at St George’s Lane in Barbourne which has led to some friction with residents over parking.
Mr Boddy said: “It can be difficult at the moment on bigger match occasions.
“You wouldn’t want to be a resident around St George’s Lane when there’s more than 1,000 people there.”
Mr Boddy said it would be “unbelievably sad” when the club leaves its home but he hopes the gates of the old stadium can be incorporated into the new design to keep some ties with the old ground.
He added: “This is the only way the club can move forward – there’s no future at the St George’s Lane site. This will allow us to move to a new stadium debt-free.”
The land at St George’s Lane has already been sold for £7.36 million, subject to planning permission, to Careys New Homes which hopes to transform the ground into 98 flats.
The flats will be modern but a spokesman for Careys said they would blend in with the area’s Victorian architecture.
The building itself will be four storeys on the west side and three on the side facing the canal.
A planning application for the flats scheme went in at the end of last year and the application for the stadium is scheduled to go into planners at Worcester City Council by the end of this month.
Both applications will be considered together.
- Read our sports coverage of the stadium plans here
- Click the picture below to see a larger plan of the site.
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