Other website sections

»Sports Market Reports

»Sports Jobs

»Tenders

»Directory

»Conferences

Aston Villa will start work on redeveloping Villa Park’s North Stand later this year after the club’s owner Randy Lerner described it as “the centrepiece of our next big plan”.

Lerner told the Birmingham Mail that the club is debating whether to rip down the stand and rebuild it as part of a scheme to increase the attendance from 42,000 to 50,000.

“We will start this year but not on a grand design project,” said the Villa chairman.

“We have internally grappled with the visitors’ entrance – the first thing you see coming down Witton Lane.

“The time frame will be either two to four years or one to three years – it depends.

“There are a couple of things that need to click in terms of a commercial model to put us in a position to really do something special with the North Stand.

“It’s on our minds, we’ve got plans, we’ve got drawings.

“There are things we can do piecemeal – for example upgrading the entrance and upgrading some of the hospitality, possibly taking some of the Doug Ellis Stand and doing some upgrades there.

“At some point, we’re going to rip it down and put another one up but we’re not quite there. But it is the centrepiece of our next big plan.”

Lerner added that 50,000 was a likely figure for the capacity increase but he admitted he does not know how many tickets Villa is capable of selling.

“If you don’t have attendance at some point your success will decline and so there are a variety of balancing acts that go into figuring out how to generate additional capacity and at what price you’re going to do it,” he continued.

“Does it mean 60,000 seats is the right number? I would predict no – it’s probably not the right number for us.

“But there is a very long tradition in this region and at Villa Park for being conscious of your stadium, upgrading your stadium. There’s a long history of stands being built and rebuilt and being built beautifully.”