Spring start for Liverpool FC stadium - to be completed by 2011

Nov 7 2007 Larry Neild and Ian Doyle, Liverpool Daily Post

Kop was inspiration

GEORGE Gillett and Tom Hicks hired the world’s sixth largest firm of architects to redraw a previously approved stadium plan, for what they want to be the “finest stadium in the world”.

Paul Hyett, chairman of London and Dallas firm Ryder HKS, headed a team of professionals at yesterday’s meeting seeking to win over the hearts and minds of Anfield people.

Rick Parry, chief executive of Liverpool FC, reaffirmed the club’s commitment to the regeneration of the Anfield area, as well as building a new stadium.

He told the meeting at the Oakmere Conference Centre, near the present Anfield ground, how the club was working alongside the city council, the Northwest Regional Development Agency and Government Office NW, to restore Stanley Park and improve the area.

Mr Hyett told how a Liverpool FC game against Barcelona was the inspiration for the new design when the Kop Choir was in full flow.

He said: “My colleagues said they had never seen anything like it.”

He said he immediately had pulled out an envelope containing his wage slip and drew a simple design with a new Kop as a huge ‘theatre’ at one end of the ground.

“I told my colleagues ‘ you could hang this whole design off the Kop’,” added Mr Hyett, former president of RIBA, the Royal Institute of British Architects.

“The new owners said their mission was to create for Liverpool the greatest football stadium in the world, and what we have designed is truly iconic.”

Decision welcomed >>>