Birmingham City's head of infrastructure Nick Smith showed BirminghamLive around the improvements made to St Andrew's
Birmingham City showed off a new-look St Andrew’s @ Knighthead Park to a sell-out crowd and Sky Sports’ cameras on Saturday evening. Following relegation to the third tier for the first time in 30 years, Knighthead have splashed £15million on infrastructure projects during the close season.
A large portion of that money has been spent on St Andrew’s, despite the promise of a new 60,000-seater super stadium and Sports Quarter on the horizon. Head of infrastructure Nick Smith often gets asked why.
During a two-hour walk around the club’s existing stadium with BirminghamLive, Smith explained: “The discussion with the owners goes, ‘OK, how quickly do you want to go here? And how much do you want to spend to get here before going to the new stadium? If you are going to go, you have to go early and hard to return on the investment you’re going to make.
“Hence why there’s a big chunk of work now. There will probably be another 18 months or two years of investment (in this stadium) before we shift our energy and put sticking plasters on whilst we focus on the build phase of the new stadium.
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“That was the thinking behind how and why we invested in this space. A lot of people have asked me, ‘Why are you spending money on this when you’re going there?’ And that’s it. You have to go on the journey.
“Because if you don’t you get to it and go, bang, here’s a thousand pound seat in hospitality it’s ‘Bloody hell, I’ve been spending £100!’. You can’t do it like that.”
Smith, whose long-standing relationship with Garry Cook led him to Blues following Knighthead’s takeover, is the brains behind it all. As we walk out onto the pitch Smith’s eyes light up. “Look at this pitch,” he says. “This pitch is Premier League quality.” Blues invested £1m on a new pitch last year and it’s estimated that another £50,000 has been spent to maintain it during the summer.
Visitors to St Andrew’s this season will notice that the pitch wears better during the winter months. They will also notice a change to the netting behind the goal. It’s now white, rather than white and blue.
“A number of the players struggle with depth perception of the black against the colours in the crowd so they can only see the frame and the goalposts,” Smith said. “They ended up changing them to white, then to blue and white, but some couldn’t see the net when the ball was flashing. The white shows up much, much brighter.”
Behind the goal in the Gil Merrick is the new City View – a plush high-end space which has a view of the pitch and Birmingham’s increasingly impressive skyline. It is one of several impressive – and unique – hospitality spaces now available to supporters. The Boardroom, which is a bar on matchdays and a space for Knighthead chiefs to converse in the week, and The Garrison are two more offerings in the Kop. Unsurprisingly, Blues have sought inspiration from Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight for The Garrison.
There are free offerings for supporters, too. The Box to Box bar in the lower Kop gives supporters a completely new space to congregate before matches and at half-time. Smith revealed 135 truck loads of dirt were removed to create it.
As we headed out of St Andrew’s Smith shows off another new space in the Tilton/Kop corner. Blues have plans to erect another fan park, in addition to the pop-up one in the Kop car park and one between the Main Stand and the Tilton.
The main fan park, which should be completed by the time Blues play Wigan Athletic at the end of August, is the one exciting club chiefs most. It will hold 1,300 supporters who will be treated to live entertainment.
“The key is what goes on there,” Smith admits. “The stage and entertainment is the key. It’s the content people come to see, they really do.”
It cost £500,000 and the canopy, which will provide shelter to those using the fan park, is another £150,000. No expense has been spared transforming the club’s existing stadium.
Blues have made an effort to become more sustainable too. The mannequins modelling replica kits in the Nike store-esque club shop are biodegradable and apparently the first of their kind in the United Kingdom.
The improved offering at St Andrew’s will only further whet the appetite for what could await us at the new stadium.
