Tottenham Hotspur will soon be displaced from their home stadium, White Hart Lane, and could find themselves playing in the national venue, Wembley Stadium. Spurs plan for a new home stadium means they’ll have to leave White Hart Lane for at least one season, beginning in 2017.
The Times reported that Tottenham have offered the Wembley board £8 million per season for the right to use the 90,000 seat venue. And just yesterday, the same publication reported that Chelsea have offered the stadium’s board £11 million per year to make it their new home while Stamford Bridge undergoes renovation.
And now today, new graphics and artist renderings were released of the new Tottenham Hotspur grounds. It’s going to be a lot more than just a football stadium. It’s also going to be the NFL’s new home in London.
Beyond that, this project is about a lot more than just sporting venues; it’s about attempted gentrification of a neighborhood that is…ready to be improved. Yes, we’ll go with that as our euphemism. Spurs are hoping to create another leisure district in North London.
In this video posted on Spurs TV, Tottenham Hotspur Chairman Daniel Levy speaks to radio DJ and Spurs fan Nihal Arthanayake about the Tottenham Hotspur vision for the new stadium scheme, after new imagery and details for the project were released today. It’s beyond just a stadium plan now; it’s a scheme.
The public realm surrounding the stadium ground is supposed to be bigger than Trafalgar Square. That’s pretty ambitious.
And in this video clip, also from Spurs TV, Daniel Levy and Mark Waller, NFL Executive Vice President, talk about the stadium scheme’s two field plans. Yes, it’s supposedly going to be the first stadium that could roll in and out two fields- a football pitch, and a NFL gridiron. It would be the first to have two fields that can be rolled in and rolled out.
The Arizona Cardinals of the NFL built the first stadium with this type of technology; but their venue in Glendale only rolls in and out one field.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with Fox Sports Digital. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes to the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition. He also appears regularly on numerous sports talk radio stations all across the country.
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