Event Detail : 04 November 2008
Exeter Chiefs Stadium
John Taylor of Kensington Taylor gave a most interesting and amusing talk to the forum on his involvement with Exeter Chiefs Rugby Club. Kensington Taylor are a firm of Chartered Architects and Urban Designers based at Pynes Hill, Exeter.
Mr Taylor has been involved with the Exeter Chiefs Rugby Club since 1992 when he designed a small building housing the Club bar at the original ground in Cowick. This led on to his involvement in the design of the new ground at Sandy Park. Mr Taylor provided an account of the events leading up to the move of the Club from the middle of the city to it’s current site adjacent to the M5 motorway.
When the ground was in Cowick, Speedway had been an integral part of the ground with its track running around the periphery of the rugby pitch itself. When Speedway moved away from the ground, the Club looked into the development of the outer areas. This revealed the existence of a restrictive covenant benefiting the properties in Ferndale Road, which ran along the southern edge of the ground. This covenant restricted the construction of any sports building on the ground to less than 18 feet in height. The Club approached all the property owners in Ferndale Road and all but one resident agreed to relinquish the benefit of the restrictive covenant. This obviously caused problems for any future plans the Club had for the ground and, in fact, Mr Taylor believes that the Club would still be there had it not been for this one person’s resolve.
When considering their options, the Club asked Mr Taylor’s opinion on the value of the site and he estimated this would be in the region of £5-6 million, as land in the city was going for about a million an acre at the time and the ground covered an area of 5.6 acres. On the basis of this, the Club decided to move and agreed the site by the motorway with the Planning Authority.
Plans were drawn up for the Cowick site, for flats and terraced houses in character with the surrounding Victorian properties, and planning commenced for the Sandy Park site.
It was decided that, in order to supplement the Club’s income, the addition of a conference and banqueting suite would be required. By this time, the tenders for the Cowick ground had come in and the first tender opened was for £9 million. The eventual tender accepted was £11.4 million from Bellway, who subsequently applied for planning for double the number of properties and as far as the speaker was aware, planning has still not been granted.
Plans could now go ahead for the conferencing/banqueting area of the Club house which involved collapsible hospitality boxes that opened out into an area large enough to seat 600 people. This has turned out to be a great success (with catering supplied by Posh Nosh). One drawback of the site was that the Planning Authority stipulated that there was to be no car traffic on match days and this necessitated the construction of the £1 million pedestrian bridge built over the A379.
The Sandy Park ground can currently accommodate 5,000 people, standing and seated. Mr Taylor explained that now the Club has aspirations to enter the premier league they will be required to have the capacity to seat 18,000 under cover. Extra seating is therefore planned for the near future. There is also planning for a David Lloyd Leisure Centre on the site.
The new Club won the Michelmores Western Morning News Project of the Year Award in 2006.