“He said one of the big difficulties was the capacity of the stadium,” he said. Henry’s idea was to turn the ground around 90 degrees, which would enable development on either side of the ground. Henry is an associate of Neil Mitchell, the well-connected Dubai-based former head of the Newcastle United Supporters Trust and occasional columnist for ChronicleLive, and that is how the issue of the problem with St James’ Park expansion came to his attention.Īt the time there was serious interest in buying the club in the Middle East and he was asked to look at ways St James’ Park could be developed.

There would be no issues with the Leazes Terrace - it's minimal and John feels there would be certain winnable planning permissions on Barrack Road side. Proposal would include apartments in the stand facing Leazes Park and parking on the Gallowgate side. Purple bits denote areas that remain unchanged. “It’d be great to stir something up because sometimes it is about the vision.” The plans: St James' Park in its current form There was some way of starting the work and not doing it all in one shot. It just needs a visionary to look at it and it think ‘We could do something here’. “So how do you make it work? The secret is to turn it 90 degrees. “But for the club it needs to be bigger but the choice is: Do you move? To me that would be the worst thing ever. He thinks a Tottenham-style development of the ground would be feasible – and felt that long before Spurs made their changes. It is the brainchild of John Henry, a design manager with architectural, masterplanning, construction and engineering experience on some big projects.

Newcastle United the 13th best supported club in the world, according to new study.

The idea, controversially, would be to turn the pitch 90 degrees to add 17,000 to the capacity. There is a long history of failed or mothballed projects to develop St James’ Park, Newcastle United’s cathedral on the hill.įrom moving to Gosforth in the sixties to the Tyneside ‘San Siro’ in Leazes Park via a plan to position the club’s ground next to the River Tyne, there have been plenty of schemes to take St James’ Park to the next level.īut a radical plan drawn up for potential investors in the last five years – and recently seen by ChronicleLive in the wake of Tottenham’s new ground opening – has a different suggestion for SJP.

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