bun-u

The Ricoh Arena

I’ve been to the Ricoh Arena, Coventry City FC’s new home since the beginning of the 2005/6 season, three times. After a difficult start, I am starting to warm to the place.

The Arena was subject to the sort of delays, which make similar concerns about the rebuilding of Wembley look ridiculous. Initially billed as Arena 2000, it was first proposed in the mid 1990s when the Coventry team, though you couldn’t say they were riding high, were nevertheless an established part of the Premiership having been in the top flight for going on 30 years. Gordon Strachan was managing the club, the team’s attack was spearheaded by Dion Dublin and Darren Huckerby with Gary McAllister pulling the strings behind them. In the Boardroom was Chairman Bryan Richardson, who seemed to have big ambitions for the club. On his wing was the MP (and soon-to-be discredited Paymaster General) Geoffrey Robinson. A new stadium was deemed to be a logical way forward, and one which had been done or was being planned by several other clubs of Coventry’s stature.

The plan was extremely ambitious, a stadium located on a site close to a M6 junction between Coventry and Nuneaton, serviced by a railway station, which could hold up to 40,000 fans and with innovative features a retractable roof AND pitch. The scheme would be embedded in a regeneration scheme building an adjacent retail park and refurbishing a disused colliery site in Keresley into a business park. As well as the club itself, both Coventry and Nuneaton Councils got involved as did the newly set-up Regional Development Agency “Advantage West Midlands” – who assigned the area a “regeneration zone” specifically for the project.

Problems began with site clearance (a shrewd small landowner held out for a high payment and was eventually rewarded with a £1 million pay-off), decontamination of the former gasworks site proved more problematic and expensive, and, to compound matters, the club’s financial situation and success on the pitch were simultaneously plummeting.

By 2001 the club had been relegated and annual accounts revealed the club to be £60 million in debt. This forced the departures of both Strachan, Richardson and any player deemed any worth in value. The new stadium scheme, which fans had dubbed either “Arena 3000” or “Arena Whenever” seemed dead in the water. What appeared to save the Arena though was its role in the wider regeneration zone, which had substantial commitment from public authorities. Finally, Coventry Council (which ironically had its first Tory majority) bit the bullet and decided to underwrite the whole scheme, thereby allowing it to proceed. The club, for their part, were given a tough contract as leaseholders, which required them to virtually fill the stadium for every game (with a new reduced capacity size of 30,000). The retractable gimmicks were gone as was the plan to put a railway station there. Arena 2000 became the Jaguar Arena, and then the Ricoh Arena when the Jaguar announced the closure of its car plant in Coventry.

With the finances, contracts and name in place it seemed little else could go wrong with the new stadium, but they did at the construction stage with contractors falling behind the target for a 2005/6 season start. However following some fixture swapping at the start of the season, the Arena finally opened (with reduced capacity of 23,000 on health and safety grounds) on 20th August 2005, for the home game with Queens Park Rangers. The team won 3-0 with goals from Jorgensen and two from Adebola. The team has since maintained a good record there (with the local fans and media quick to dub the place “Fortress Arena”) though have been let down overall with their poor away form.

My first vist to the Arena was for the game against Luton, which we won 1-0 (the goal again courtesy of Adebola). I’d heard good reviews about the stadium from media and friends so my expectations were high. Overall though, my own first impressions fell short. My first problem was the retail park setting, which is common to all new stadia. This usually allows clubs to promote their grounds as being ‘more accessible’ but end up being a pain in the neck to get to whatever your chosen transport. A couple of friends and I, were dropped off by car in a place that appeared close to the Arena, but the car-tailored urban design features makes it difficult to move in the obvious ‘as the crow flies’ directions. Coming up against 10 feet walls, highway barricades and inhospitable roadside shrubbery made unpleasant and time-consuming the experience of getting to the turnstiles.

From the outside, the Arena reminded me of several other new stadiums I had been to at Derby, Sunderland, Reading and Leicester. Exposed jagged structures on top of a seamless almost circular perimeter wall. Together with the obligatory corporate advertising the Arena exterior is marked with fans’ contributions (in the form of personalised bricks) to the wall of fame honouring players from the bygone era and not-too-distance past. Inside is altogether more impressive (especially now having seen 3 games – none lost), with a design that conjures a raucous atmosphere, even when there are sparse areas.

The last game I went to was on Saturday, where we almost (and should’ve) sunk Middlesborough in the FA Cup 4th Round, but drew 1-1 instead. The game attracted the Arena’s largest crowd of almost 29,000 (one of the biggest gates of the day), which I’m sure contributed to the Sky Blues outplaying of their hosts. The increased crowd contributed to chaotic traffic conditions before and after the game, which apparently has become a regular feature on match days.

The exit that game from the Arena to the car park (in Tescos – where you have to convince the parking attendant that you’ve spent over £25 on shopping) was a strangely thrilling experience. To avoid the long walk around the retail park features, canal and railway line, we followed some people who seemed to be making their way to the car park in a more direct fashion. They led us to what amounted to be a challenging assault course, comprising a scramble down a steep muddy hill, a careful manoeuvring across a narrow ledge across the canal and then through a disused, derelict and pitch black tunnel, which was about 30 metres long and had a truncated exit that you need to crawl out of before again scrambling up a steep hill to the Tescos car park. All this was while in the company of up to a hundred other people performing the same task. I wish I had a video camera for this (though it might’ve proved tricky) because it was such a surreal and yet exhilarating experience, like a mob of psycho-geographers disregarding architects/planners’strategies and tunnelling their own way through.

posted by David M @ 5:48 pm