Bristol Rovers chairman Hussain AlSaeed has confirmed that the club hope to start work on their plans to redevelop the Memorial Stadium and The Quarters towards the end of this year or at the start of 2026.
Ambitions to redevelop the club’s key infrastructure were made clear just a few months into the Kuwaiti’s take over in August 2023, with it confirmed in October 2023 that Rovers would be looking to redevelop the Memorial Stadium as opposed to building a new ground at the proposed Fruit Market site.
Plans have also been in place to notably expand the club’s training facility on Hortham Lane in Almondsbury which was originally opened in 2020.
AlSaeed recently spoke to club media to discuss a number of topics, including the latest on infrastructural plans, where he confirmed that pre-applications for both projects were submitted in 2024.
“For the infrastructure, we talked about it last year but this is what we’ve done in 2024 which is actually we submitted the pre-application for the Memorial [Stadium] area and we have also received the feedback from the council and we are working at the moment on their notes and observations and we are going to re-submit next month,” the Rovers chairman told BRTV.
“Basically what we are doing, and I’m sorry that I cannot share some of the pictures or the plans at the moment but soon we will. Once we get the second round of the pre-application we will share it with our fans.
“But basically the first stage will be closing the gaps in the East Stand, the North and the South so that will all be one piece and converting all the free-standing or the terraces into seated. So the first stage is doing that on the east side plus the west side, converting all the west side to be seated rather than terraces.
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“That operation or that first stage of that will only increase the capacity by 500 to 1,000 because the conversion understanding will be less than that. But the second stage, which is building on the North Stand, will take the capacity about 2,500 to 3,000.
“So once we’re completely finished, we will be around 16,000 to 17,000 but on the first stage we will increase between 500 and 1,000.”
In a previous interview, AlSaeed explained that the redevelopment of the Memorial Stadium will see the East, North and West Stands all expanded by some extent after the South Stand was opened in December 2023, although that had been a project led by club president Wael Al-Qadi prior to the Kuwaiti takeover.
Meanwhile, the expansion of The Quarters would see not only the men’s first-team accommodated but also the women’s team and academy sides. There are also plans to have facilities made available for public use.
On the training ground, the Rovers chairman added: “For the training ground, we have also submitted the pre-application in September 2024. We had [an] initial meeting, a very good meeting, with the council and we are waiting for their reply regarding our proposal for the training ground.
“So both projects are going [at] the same pace and we hope that 2025 we will get the final approval for both and I think just before that we will share the final design with our fans and hopefully the start of the work end of this year or the start of 2026.”