RUFC - Chairman talks about new stadium

Rotherham United have managed to whittle down the twelve contracting companies, who are competing to build their new state-of-the-art stadium, down to four and, hopefully, in the next few days down to two.

At the moment there are four different tenders on the table and the two, that Chairman, Tony Stewart thinks are the best, will be chosen in the next few days with the eventual contractor announced by the middle of February, which should pave the way for work to start on the new twelve thousand seater complex.

Speaking to David Beddows of The Advertiser, Mr Stewart said, 'A lot of time and effort has gone into bringing forward the best possible scheme for Rotherham United. Once the contractor is chosen then we would hope to start preparatory work on the site around March and then major construction work on the actual stadium itself would then get underway in May.

'We are anticipating a build time of eleven months, which is allowing for factors such as bad weather.

'We`ve given the four companies competing a brief for a dome like design with a minimum of twelve thousand seats, three floors of facilities in the main stand and to meet our requirement for an iconic structure with the best acoustics, lighting and viewing positions for spectators. The designs that have been submitted are exciting and they will form part of the regenerated Guest and Chrimes site.`

The stadium, which will cost around twenty million pounds, is expected to be bowl shaped, have five hundred car parking spaces plus behind the scenes corporate and community facilities which will be designed to generate revenue for the club and which will include banqueting and conference space for six hundred people.

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