Seat Replacement Project Begins
The first steps in a staged process to rejuvenate seating in the Devonport End, Lyndhurst Road Stand, and Barn Park End begin in earnest on Monday, 17 January.
As part of the club’s recently announced schedule of stadium improvement works, expenditure has been approved to replace the original seats throughout the horseshoe at Home Park, bringing the stadium back to its best.
This work will see every seat in the stadium, excluding the Mayflower Grandstand, taken out, with brand new seats installed in their place. The club has appointed leading firm Alderdale Seating Ltd. to undertake this work, with Alderdale’s impressive portfolio including a number of Premier League clubs, including Manchester United.
Work will be tailored around fixtures at Home Park, ensuring that our capacity is unaltered by this work. It will, however, mean that, supporters will notice a mixture of old and new seating installed throughout the stadium in the short term, as our contractor goes about the significant task of replacing exactly 12,797 seats.
From next week, seats located between blocks 8-16 will begin to be installed, with seats in the Lyndhurst designed to spell out ‘Home Park’, as seen in the indicative image below. Work will follow to replace the seats in the Devonport End and Barn Park End later this year.
With these seats unchanged since the redevelopment of the stadium in 2001, we understand that they carry a lot of sentimental value for supporters. As such, we welcome season ticket holders to get in touch to claim the seats as their own. The club will not charge supporters to claim their seat, but we do ask that you are able to collect them in a timely manner, once informed they are available for collection.
We do apologise for the short turnaround, but any supporters wishing to claim their seats are asked to email Bill.Blower@pafc.co.uk before Saturday evening with their stand, block, row and seat number, to ensure that the contractors preserve your seat. Please note that the fixings for seat installation will remain in place for the replacement seats, and so supporters will simply receive the two plastic fittings that make up the seat and the seat back.
When selecting a contractor to carry out the works, one key factor was ensuring that the environmental consequences of disposing of thousands of plastic seats was kept to a minimum. As such, we are delighted to confirm that the old seats will be recycled if unclaimed by season ticket holders for personal use.
Chief Executive Officer, Andrew Parkinson, said: “Stadium rejuvenation is often a ‘nice to have’ for many clubs, particularly in the current climate, but thanks to strong leadership from our Board, hard work from our excellent staff, and outstanding backing from our supporters, we are in a position to lay the foundations for our future.
“Replacing these seats is one element of an ongoing programme to improve facilities and enhance our supporter experience at Argyle.
“Anyone who has been to Home Park in recent seasons can see that the seats have needed replacing for some time, and, while we are experiencing our highest attendances for well over a decade, there is no better time, in our view, to ensure that we do everything we can to make it a place to be proud of.”
