St James' Park

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This article is about the stadium in Newcastle. For the park in London, see St James's Park. For the football stadium in Exeter, see St James Park.

St James' Park
St James' Park
Location	Newcastle upon Tyne, England
Coordinates	54° 58' 31.93" N 1° 37' 17.81" W
Opened	1880
Renovated	1998-2000
Owner	Freemen of Newcastle upon Tyne
Surface	Grass
Tenants
Newcastle United F.C
Capacity
52,387

St James' Park is an all-seater stadium in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, and is the home of Newcastle United Football Club. The stadium has a capacity of 52,387, making it the fourth largest football stadium in England. The four sides of the ground are known as the Gallowgate End (officially the Newcastle Brown Ale Stand), the Leazes End (officially the Sir John Hall Stand), the Milburn Stand (after 1950s player Jackie Milburn) and the East Stand. It was first used by Newcastle United in 1892 after the unification of Newcastle East End and Newcastle West End, although football had been played there since 1880.

It was announced on 2007-04-02 that the club intend to submit plans for a new £300million development that would increase the stadium's capacity to at least 60,000.^[1]

1 Redevelopment
2 Lopsided Design
3 Trivia
4 Average Attendance
- 4.1 Premier League
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Redevelopment

The ground received only modest expansion until the early 1990s when businessman Sir John Hall invested heavily in the club. By 1995 the stadium had reached a capacity of 36,610 seats. However this was still not enough for the club's fan base, hence plans were drawn to move to a new stadium in nearby Leazes Park. These plans fell through due to political wranglings, led by a conservation group headed by Dolly Potter. Instead the club decided to expand the current St James' Park by adding extra tiers to the Sir John Hall Stand and the Milburn Stand.

The upper tiers on the West and North sides of the ground were completed in July 2000, with seats and executive boxes also installed. The upper tiers (especially the upper tier on the Sir John Hall Stand) are home to Newcastle's most vocal supporters. This is because the Away fans are situated on the upper tier of the Sir John Hall Stand.

Executive boxes in the East Stand were demolished and replaced by seating blocks from pitch level up to the existing rows, in a mirror image of the Milburn Stand, increasing capacity to approximately 52,143. The current capacity is 52,387, after some handrails were removed to make way for approximately 200 new seats, back in 2004.

View of the pitch from the directors box.

The cost of the new construction work was estimated at £42 million, significantly higher than the proposed Leazes Park stadium. Although the stadium appears lop-sided when viewed from the outside, the bottom tier of the four stands does create an integral rectangular bowl around the stadium, with the newer stands rising above this on three sides. The scope for further expansion is limited by a road facing the Gallowgate end and the Tyne and Wear Metro runs underneath where the proposed expansion would be.

There is also a multi-storey car park. The car park includes a ramp into a St James' Park bar, which is sometimes used for competition nights where a car could be the prize.

The club also purchased the land around and above the St James Metro station, with the eventual aim of building hotel and conference facilities. In 2005, a new bar was built beneath the upper tier of the Gallowgate End, named "Shearer's'" after Newcastle player Alan Shearer. During excavation underneath the stand during building work, the builders uncovered the original steps of the old Gallowgate End stand, which had simply been covered up when the stadium was fully renovated in 1993. These steps were removed for Shearer's Bar.

The stadium has hosted several music shows; including The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Queen, Bob Dylan and most recently Bryan Adams.

[edit] Lopsided Design

The stadium has come under criticism for its design. While the design is very unique and the four stands create a rectangular bowl, the way stands have been extended makes the ground look lopsided and incomplete. The Newcastle Brown Ale Stand, or Gallowgate End, can be extended to level 7 height (the same size as Milburn and Sir John Hall stands).

Increasing the Gallowgate would mean extra foundations due to the nearby Metro Station and would cost more, with extra caution because of a nearby road. This could be funded by the FA if England host the 2018 World Cup.

Increasing the East Stand is currently not possible, as there are listed buildings behind the stand. One option would be to connect the roof that goes over the Sir John Hall, Milburn and Gallowgate stands over the East Stand and fill the empty space between the roof and stand with executive boxes.

[edit] Trivia

The stadium hosted three matches during Euro 1996. Along with Elland Road it was assigned to Group B, which comprised France, Spain, Romania and Bulgaria.

St James' Park is set to host some football matches in the 2012 Summer Olympics.

While the name of the stadium does not take an 's' after the apostrophe, in earlier years it generally did; indeed match day programmes printed up until the late 1940s have it written as St James's Park. The name now is officially St James' Park, although the majority of people still pronounce it in with the additional possessive 's'.

St James' Park is the only FA Premier League Stadium in the centre of a city outside of London.

It is the only original major football stadium in the north east of England, as Sunderland's Roker Park has been replaced by the Stadium of Light and Middlesbrough's Ayresome Park has been replaced by the Riverside Stadium.

St James' Park was featured in the 2002 movie Goal!, in which the character, Santiago Muñez, plays for Newcastle United.

It is the only stadium in the FA Premier League to not have a scoreboard of any kind.

St James' Park was named as one of the 6 stadiums in England to be up to FIFA standard in order to stage a World Cup Match. The others were the new Wembley, Old Trafford, Emirates Stadium, City of Manchester Stadium, and Villa Park. When Liverpool's Stanley Park Stadium is completed, this will be added to the list.