The mysterious case of the disappearing seats...

An archive of news, events and discussion leading up to and post West Ham United's historic move from Upton Park to Stratford in 2016.

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gavrosh
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Joined: Tue Mar 29, 2011 5:28 pm

The mysterious case of the disappearing seats...

Post by gavrosh »

As you may know, I've followed this closely for some time, yet still some questions for me linger concerning the capacity of the stadium. As designed originally, the lower tier held 25,000 seats, and the upper tier 55,000, making an overall capacity of 80,000. The current plan is to have a capacity of 54,000 for 'pitch' mode and 60,000 for athletics, suggesting that 6,000 seats are kept redundant in their fixed position in pitch mode. A FOI request from Sean revealed the following:

"The London Legacy Development Corporation (Legacy Corporation) can confirm that we

hold some of the information you have requested. Our response is below following your

order:

Question 1 - Number of physical seats in the lower seating bowl within the eight

retractable seating sections.

There are 20,758 seats in pitch sport mode.

Question 2 - The number of demountable seats that will in place in football mode in

the East stand to fill the gap between upper and lower tiers.

There are 2,200 seats. This number is included in the question 1 figure as the infill seats are part of the lower bowl in the East Stand.

Question 3 - The total number of physical seats in the new West stand middle stand.

There are 1,416 seats in the West stand middle tier.

Question 4 - The total number of physical seats in the upper tier stand/seating bowl whether used or unused in different modes.

There are a total of 44,336 seats in the upper tier.

Question 5 - The total number of seats available to disabled visitors within the whole
stadium. There are 253 wheel chair accessible seats (including a companion seat) in pitch sport mode and 429 wheelchair accessible seats (including a companion seat) in athletics mode"


Now, this suggests that without the demountable east stand infill seats, there will be 18,558 seats in the extended lower tier, again corroborating the loss of 6,000 permanent seats.

Looking at the recent pics and the plans for the lower tier (see below) you'll see that there's roughly 7 blocks per end lower tier, and 13 for each side lower. That suggests around 465 people per block, or around 3,300 for each extended lower tier. But looking again at the redundant seats, you can make the case for at most 9 blocks in redundancy, which is about 4,200 seats. So question 1 is 'where are the extra 2,000 redundant seats'?

Now, looking at the upper tier, this has gone from 55,000 to 44,336 so a loss of over 10,000 seats. We know that around 3,000 seats were taken out thanks to the need to lower the rood (two rows of seats had to be removed) and the hospitality section lost some seats when remodelled, but that doesn't explain the loss of 10,00 seats. So where are they? (note that the shaded section of the upper tier is the area that is initially set out of bounds. Presumably, this is just over 11,000 seats (54,000 - 20,758 = 33,242 seats in use in pitch mode).

Image

Larger image can be seen here:

http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j37 ... eating.png
Beefy's mum
Posts: 309
Joined: Tue Oct 25, 2011 3:43 pm

Re: The mysterious case of the disappearing seats...

Post by Beefy's mum »

What's your point?
gavrosh
Posts: 1275
Joined: Tue Mar 29, 2011 5:28 pm

Re: The mysterious case of the disappearing seats...

Post by gavrosh »

In short, how do the blanked off sections you can see in the first diagram equate to 24% of the entire lower tier? (6000/25000 = 24%).

And where have 10,000 seats in the upper tier disappeared to? Because it doesnt look like 10,000 seats have simply vanished.
bengeo
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Re: The mysterious case of the disappearing seats...

Post by bengeo »

gavrosh wrote:And where have 10,000 seats in the upper tier disappeared to? Because it doesnt look like 10,000 seats have simply vanished.
Doing a quick count from my photos there are about 10 blocks of 20 seats by 20 rows covered at each end and then some adjacent blocks where the covering tapers. So over 4000 seats per end seem to be covered.
Chris BMU
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Re: The mysterious case of the disappearing seats...

Post by Chris BMU »

gavrosh wrote:In short, how do the blanked off sections you can see in the first diagram equate to 24% of the entire lower tier? (6000/25000 = 24%).

And where have 10,000 seats in the upper tier disappeared to? Because it doesnt look like 10,000 seats have simply vanished.
When the retractable seats are pushed back again, the lower bowl has a larger circumference than in pitch mode. So yes, I would have thought it could easily be 25% larger. The extra seats are hiding behind/under the retractable and demountable sections.
bengeo
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Re: The mysterious case of the disappearing seats...

Post by bengeo »

In the Lower Tier if you look at the pitch format seating plan then Blocks 121, 122, 123, 149, 150 & 151 are missing from the ends. 6 blocks perhaps 3000 seats. Then in the corners 115, 116, 128, 129, 143, 144 and I presume 156 & 157 are missing. So there are more missing blocks than shown in those plans?
e10hammer
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Re: The mysterious case of the disappearing seats...

Post by e10hammer »

We know there are 21,000 seats in the lower tier including the east stand fill in and 52,000 seats in the upper tier after removing 3,000 seats for the roof, therefore a loss of 4000 in the lower and 3,000 in the upper, leaving what should be a 73,000 seat stadium, does this mean almost 20,000 seats have been covered at the ends, it doesn't look like 25% of the stadium has been put under wraps.
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