Speaking on the Phil Hay Show, Leeds United CEO Angus Kinnear has delivered an update on the development of Elland Road.
Leeds announced plans to expand Elland Road at their centenary celebrations back in 2019, but here we are almost 18 months later, and we haven’t heard much more since.
Luckily, Kinnear gave us the lowdown on what’s happening in this podcast appearance.
“Everybody has agreed that what we have isn’t going to take us to where we want to go, so it’s a matter of when rather than if,” Kinnear said.
“Yeah, so look at the stadiums we need to benchmark ourselves against. We need to be between 50 and 60 thousand to be financially competitive with other world-class stadiums in the Premier League
“We know we have the demand for that, we know that from our season ticket waiting lists, our hospitality waiting lists and we know that Leeds as a city can sustain a club at 50 to 60 thousand.
“The location of the ground isn’t being looked at. We’re in a fantastic location right near the centre and we have a horseshoe of land around the ground we can expand into, which isn’t a luxury that lots of clubs have. The only challenging side is the Elland Road side where we back right onto the road, so to move that way is more challenging and it would also impact the café where I get my lunch.
“The project works on a year-by-year basis where you build on top of one stand while people are still sitting in it and then you move them into the upper tier and complete the stand below, so it’s a process where you don’t lose capacity.
“The visions that we’re seeing are really impressive, it’s something everyone in the city will be proud of and we’re getting a lot of support from the city council, but we’re still at the early stages because our first priority is to sustain Premier League status and then we can build on that.”
Of course, what we all want to know is when can we expect construction to start on the stadium.
Unfortunately, Kinnear was unwilling to give any dates as he didn’t want to promise something he couldn’t deliver on.
“Well, what we’ve been very conscious of is not promising things we’re not sure we can deliver on. Lots of clubs have brought out attractive virtual reality renders of their stadiums and then never delivered against them or delivered 10 or 20 years later. We want to come to the fanbase with a proper consultation with what they want, allow them to input into those designs and then deliver something with financing behind it. We’re not there yet, but the vision is there and the work is going on behind the scenes.”
This is very exciting to say the least.
Just imagine, a 60,000 capacity Elland Road rocking in the Premier League, it would be nothing short of magical.
We can only hope that these plans are put into action sooner rather than later, as it would be a massive shame if Marcelo Bielsa never got to manage in front of the newly-developed stadium.
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