BOURNEMOUTH are set to more than double their stadium capacity.
The Cherries’ Vitality Stadium home holds just 11,307 fans – making it by far the smallest ground in the Premier League.
AlamyBournemouth are aiming to expand their current Dean Court home[/caption]
ReutersThe Vitality Stadium holds 11,307 fans[/caption]
Club owner Bill Foley has previously discussed the possibility of Bournemouth building a new stadium.
But during a recent appearance on talkSPORT, the American revealed that the Cherries are now aiming to expand their current Dean Court site.
After claiming that Bournemouth will be moving to their new training ground in April, the 80-year-old said: “We are well underway to having a solution for our stadium with several stages in mind.
“The first stage would be to grow to about 16,000 seats, the next stage would be about 20,000, and the third stage would be to about 24,000 seats.
“Much more hospitality and a much more welcoming environment, in terms of when people arrive and how they get into the stands and so on.”
The Vitality Stadium is privately owned by property company Structadene.
Foley wants to buy Bournemouth’s stadium outright before beginning redevelopment work.
He added: “We are hopefully going to be acquiring the Vitality.
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“We have a plan in place. It is going to be a staged effort, and we need to have the council’s approval.
“We’ll start with the south stand, and we’ll really expand that and make that a permanent stand with some hospitality.
“At the same time we’re going to be redoing the main stand in terms of hospitality and ingress and egress, high speed elevators and so on so people aren’t having to walk up three flights to go to have lunch and then walk down two flights to go to their seats, and then walk two flights up again.
“The stadium is just antiquated and we need to improve it.”
On the work that has gone on behind the scenes, Foley continued: “We’ve been working hard on it. Our general contractor was over in Las Vegas last Monday and we spent four or five hours together, going through options and looking at the stages and how we move forward.
“Now we’re working with the council to see if we can get fairly quick approval for what we want to do.
“We’ve already raised the money, so the sooner we get approvals and we get our design plan in place, we’ve already retained our architects and retained our builder and so on, we’ll be ready to go.
“People will be surprised with how quickly we go with this situation.”
Foley also revealed that Bournemouth are looking to extend boss Andoni Iraola‘s contract, with the Spaniard’s current deal set to expire at the end of next season.
According to talkSPORT, Iraola would be Tottenham’s top candidate to replace Ange Postecoglou, should the under-fire Aussie be sacked.
GettyBill Foley revealed Bournemouth’s plans to talkSPORT[/caption] Creator – [#item_custom_dc:creator]
