St. Mirren Park

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St. Mirren Park
Love Street

Location	Paisley, Scotland
Opened	1895
Owner	St. Mirren
Surface	Grass
Tenants	St.Mirren
Capacity	10,800
Field dimensions	110 x 70 yards

St. Mirren Park, more commonly known as Love Street, is a football stadium located on Love Street in Paisley, Scotland. The home ground of St. Mirren F.C., the stadium has an all seated capacity of 10,800. The club had previously been playing at Fullerton Park until 1895. The present ground was inaugurated in 1877, and opened in 1895. The record attendance is 47,438 versus Celtic in 1949.

The main stand is on the southern side of the stadium, but does not run the entire length of the pitch. The biggest stand is the West stand, which houses away fans. The 'North Bank' is where the loudest, most 'hard-core' home fans usually are, and songs are usually started here. The east, or Reid Kerr College stand, is on the Love Street side of the stadium and is the newest stand.

As well as football, the stadium has also been a venue for motorcycle speedway. The Paisley Lions team were based at St Mirren Park in 1975 and 1976 and took part in the British National League.

1 Under-soil heating
2 Future developments
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Under-soil heating

One of the criteria for admittance to the Scottish Premier League is that clubs' grounds are equipped with under-soil heating. Having gained promotion from the Scottish first division at the end of the 2005-2006 season, St. Mirren found themselves in a quandary; Love Street does not have under-soil heating. As the club are planning to move to a new site shortly, they were faced with installing an expensive heating system that might only be used for one season, a financial burden the club would struggle to meet. The club considered requesting a period of grace from the SPL, but in the end have decided to go ahead with fitting the system.^[1]

[edit] Future developments

St. Mirren continue to push forward with plans to move to a new purpose built stadium at a site half a mile away on Greenhill Road in Ferguslie Park. To do this, the club have come to an agreement with the Scottish Executive to allow them to sell the land to a supermarket chain, rather than a housing developer, as this would generate more capital, which in turn would pay for the construction of a new stadium, and help alleviate some of the team's debt. In April 2007 the club struck a deal with the supermarket chain Tesco, who will build a supermarket on the current site of the stadium once the club leaves for their new stadium. Work on the new ground started on 9 January 2008 and is expected to be completed for the club to move into in early 2009.