Birmingham City released stunning new images of The Powerhouse Stadium at an event held at St Andrew’s on Tuesday night. Blues’ head of infrastructure Nick Smith led the ‘Built by Us’ event to provide key updates about the design of the new stadium, also taking questions from fans. He was joined by Eliot Postma, the partner and group leader at Heatherwick Studio, who are behind the incredible plans.
Smith and Postma shared new designs showing The Powerhouse Stadium from all angles, both inside and outside. The 62,000-seater stadium will be the centrepiece of the Birmingham Sports Quarter. Smith revealed that a specifically-designed ‘Blues Way’ will help funnel thousands of supporters around the Sports Quarter and into The Powerhouse Stadium. “It’ll be similar to Wembley Way but much better,” quipped Smith, while Postma explained that the stadium has been rotated 4.5 degrees from the original designs shared last year so that the tallest of the already-iconic chimneys is directly adjacent to the new walkway.
Blues’ owners Knighthead and Heatherwick know that getting fans to and from The Powerhouse will be key. Towards that end, Adderley Park train station is planned to be moved into the Sports Quarter as part of a new station able to serve bigger and more frequent services, with two ‘mobility hubs’ for fans arriving by bus and car, linked with the Curzon Street HS2 development.
Another challenge is attempting to replicate the hostility of the Blues’ current home, St Andrew’s. Towards that end, Postma revealed what he perceived to be an unusual request from the club. Sharing a new mock-up showing visiting supporters going directly under a tunnel and into the away end made to feel “hostile and unwelcoming” as described by Smith, Postma joked: “It’s not often you hear clients say ‘make it worse!’”
The fan parks Knighthead have added around St Andrew’s have proved extremely popular with supporters, and there are plans for four distinct fan parks surrounding the new stadium, able to accommodate over 25,000 spectators. While inside the ground, there will be no fewer than 125 places to buy a pint, with a capacity to serve 266,000 pints on a matchday.
Postma made a specific reference to the concourse beneath the vast South stand, which will house 20,000 home fans — as well as the retractable pitch. “Jeremy (Dale) asked me what I was most excited about in the project and it might actually be this space,” said Postma. “An interesting problem we had to solve with this space — which is what has unlocked it — is that this is where the pitch slides out underneath, in this area of the building. The reason we’ve got the 25 metre span is because one third of the pitch is going to slide under this area. That meant all the structure had to get out the way and it has freed up this amazing atrium space and home base for the Blues fans.”
Blues chairman Tom Wagner is keen for the stadium to be open by 2030.
