Future of Cappielow?

[Rossco1874]

Been thinking about this for a while now & especially given the current state with regards to the storm damage.

What sort of future is there realistically for Cappielow? With the age of the ground & keeping it up to standards getting more challenging each season I think there needs to be a discussion with regards to it being viable to renovate, There is then further questions over the funding.

Looking at Falkirk they got nearly £3 million for Brockville & Falkirk council helped fund the new stadium to make it community focused. St Mirren got between £10-15 million depending on what source you read. 

If we were to look to sell Cappielow how much realistically is the land worth & who is likely to buy it with regards to utilising the site? We most likely would not get a supermarket coming in like St Mirren did to buy the land & give St Mirren funds for new stadium with enough left to clear the debts.

If we are looking to build a new stadium we will still need external funding to do so, where would that likely come from? There is no money for the council to part fund any new stadium, are there any grants that could be utilised? Could there be a separate fan funded stream solely for stadium development? I would not mind contributing to a fund separate from MCT solely set aside for any stadium improvements & one which doesn't interfere with any playing budget.

[Greacen2000]

Unfortunately (unlike brockville and love street) I don’t think that Cappielow is in a particularly desirable location for either retail or housing.  We may also have missed the boat a bit on the opportunity as the types of deal St Mirren got are rare now, and if it was ever going to happen it would probably have been before the new retail park was built in the port.  I also think that the council may have done something in the past to zone Cappielow so that it can only be used for sport & leisure (possibly at the time to protect it from the aspirations of HS)?  Presumably if this is the case, there’s always the possibility of overturning the decision with the correct support.

So this leaves us with a stadium sitting on land which is not valuable, and the prospect of any move to a new one therefore needing substantial external funding.  Weighing up the relative costs & benefits it feels to me like staying where we are and carrying out gradual improvements might be a more viable approach (a bit like what Ayr have been doing).

On personal preference I would always prefer us to remain at Cappielow rather than move to a soulless out of town Lego stadium, but if there was a strong case that making this sort of move would be financially beneficial to the club then I would certainly be open to it.  For example(warning - fanciful speculation coming up), if certain local businessmen offered us a deal whereby we would get a couple of million in the bank plus a new stadium built on other land owned by them, this would be most attractive and certainly worth giving serious consideration to (but I suspect such a deal is an unrealistic prospect)

As recently as probably the late 90s-early 2000s I would say Cappielow had a reputation of being a bit of a dilapidated & embarrassing mess, but in more recent years I’ve started to see it get a lot more appreciation from visitors as it’s one of the few stadiums which still retains the character of old fashioned stadiums, along with the iconic backdrop of the hills, titan crane & sugar houses. This is something I appreciate too, and I would love it if there was a way of the club leaning into this while making the stadium more serviceable & in keeping with the clubs needs.

Edited February 26 by Greacen2000

[irnbru]

Don't think the land is of particularly high value unless there's council houses or something built there. We're unlikely to get any sort of private investment because of the area. 

I wouldn't like us to move anyway although it's difficult to be sustainable with a stadium with high running costs that doesn't really make any money apart from when there's games there. 

That said, I don't think the Cowshed or anywhere apart from the main stand will have particularly high costs to keep them up to scratch. Apart from the roof issues recently, which could happen anywhere with that weather, it's just a roof. 

Ideal scenario for me would be to get a main stand similar to what Ayr done recently with better hospitality, office areas, etc while still keeping the rest of what we have. 

[TRVMP]

I'm sure I heard that the main stand is grandfathered in, and it's so close to the railway line that anything net-new wouldn't get permission.

[dunning1874]

Yeah the problem is how constrained we are for any sort of redevelopment even if the money was there. Somerset has wasteland behind their new stand, we're already backing directly onto a railway line.

If you're doing a bottomless pit of money ideal redevelopment scenario that sees us stay at Cappielow then you'd really be needing to move the pitch - move the Cowshed back towards the main road, move the WDE back to create both room between the railway and pitch for a better main stand and room between Sinclair St and the pitch for a more conventionally shaped end. However this is never happening in reality beyond the vanishingly unlikely scenario of not only a Morton fan winning Euromillions but giving tens of millions of it to the club with no strings attached. Even at that it would likely cost more than building a new stadium, so we maybe have to get used to the idea that in the long term remaining at Cappielow might not be viable.

It's clearly on MCT's agenda as a few of the questions in their survey related to future development. It's possible we're going to have to think as a fanbase about at what point we need to accept external investment: my own view on fan ownership is that it's hard won and not something we should want to give up easily and I'm not even a fan of the idea of dropping below 75%+, but if someone comes along with the kind of money that can allow us meaningful capital expenditure and want more than 25% of the club for it, that's money we aren't going to raise ourselves so moving to a 50+1 arrangement would have to be a price worth paying. If it's an outright sale that sees us lose control of the club that's a bigger consideration, but again the long term future of Cappielow might make going down that route necessary.

[TONofmemories]

Better option might be leaving main stand as is, given constraints, and redeveloping the shed. Do we own the land Arnold Clark use? 

[Alibi]

I don't think Morton own Arnold Clark's site.

The best way to redevelop would be to pretty much flatten everything down to pitch level and build up from there.  That way there could be accommodation under new suspended seating decks rather than having earth embankments.  It should be possible to have a cowshed standing area and a seating area at the front but with accommodation underneath once you get back far enough that the headroom undeneath would be sufficient.  Also provision for a proper camera/TV facility, which could be up the back as with a cantilever roof posts would not be a problem.  it all costs money though, which is the real problem.

At one time when Warren Hawke was around, there was an idea to have a building at the sinclair Street end with a footbridge over the the carpark (Sinclair St could have been diverted slightly to regularise the shape of the Sinclair St area and the idea was to have hospitaliy rooms with office space underneath.

[Waverley]

IIRC, many years ago there was talk of building a stadium on the other side of Sinclair Street, ie the current parking lot. Is that feasible, size-wise?

[Greacen2000]

1 hour ago, Waverley said:

IIRC, many years ago there was talk of building a stadium on the other side of Sinclair Street, ie the current parking lot. Is that feasible, size-wise?

Based on using the measuring tool on Google maps, the current footprint of Cappielow wouldn’t fit in that space.  It might be possible to build a compact stadium on that ground but I’m not sure it would be of any benefit to us (plus we already have one of the smallest pitches in the league).

Then there’s the issue of the Raes/GC having retained ownership of it when the stadium was handed over to MCT.

I also have a vague memory of hearing that there are limits on how that space could be developed due to contaminants in the ground (as I think it used to be a coal yard).

[Madton]

3 hours ago, Greacen2000 said:

Based on using the measuring tool on Google maps, the current footprint of Cappielow wouldn’t fit in that space.  It might be possible to build a compact stadium on that ground but I’m not sure it would be of any benefit to us (plus we already have one of the smallest pitches in the league).

Then there’s the issue of the Raes/GC having retained ownership of it when the stadium was handed over to MCT.

I also have a vague memory of hearing that there are limits on how that space could be developed due to contaminants in the ground (as I think it used to be a coal yard).

Always wondered if we could have a pitch running from the main road to railway line in the car park space rather than from Port to Greenock as we don't have an Arnold Clark blocking us.

Could have two 3k stands running parallel to Sinclair Street with space behind both goals for expansion if need be or even just 1 if it's too close to railway.

Edited February 27 by Madton

[Pedrodelawasp]

In the realms of fantasy, such as a Euro Millions winning fan bankrolling the club: Fill in the dock (as Everton have done) and convert the sugar sheds to the facade of a glorious main stand.

Less fantastical: If we could incrementally upgrade the place, I think shifting the pitch towards the Cowshed side would be a good move. Renewing the Wee Dublin and then the Shed, covering them using goalpost style support trusses to replace the existing roof and floodlight towers (similar to Tynecastle.) The extra room in front of the Main stand would improve sight lines from there and maybe allow for some small terracing to be added at pitch level? Or a full replacement of the stand?

Slightly more realistic: replace the Shed roof and build an unobtrusive camera gantry. Maybe cover the Wee Dublin. New toilets with hot water and usable, working hand dryers all round.

[AyrshireTon]

There was once talk of a stand at the Sinclair street end, going over the road (the drawing in the Tele even had cars and coaches going under it) when John Wilson was in charge (just before HS came along).

[Alibi]

I'm not totally certain, but I think it would be possibe to build a new ground within the car park area.  It might not be able to accommodate a ground with 4 full sides but i'd say you could have proper stands down eacn touchline and smaller structures behind the goals.  It might be possible to dig the infill material out to form a bowl withthe pitch at the bottom and seating/ terracing up the slopes although that can be easteful of potential development space.  There might also be watercourses underground.

Regarding the ground contamination IIRC it's stuff like coal, ash and possibly the likes of oil spillage.  I don't think it would be a huge problem for housing development - IIRC you need to remove the top 1200mm and replace it with clean infill in case anyone wants to grow tatties in their garden but you don't need to remove the contamination entirely - My recollection of these things is a bit vague now.

[TopCat]

We'll be doing very well if get a fully/partially demolished main stand,  to be replaced with an office block, gym/dressing room area and a hospitality suite, plus 200 seats. Even then, that's if we find someone daft enough to give us a 7-figure sum. 

I'd settle for a boiler in the cowshed, something to reduce the number of pillars and a solution to sort out the gantry nonsense.

[dunning1874]

Any new build stadium - and worth noting that's a project that would also require millions to be raised from somewhere - should follow the same template as Cappielow of one main stand and three terraces, although you'd want to get a roof on all of them. Terracing is cheaper, allows a bigger capacity, is a considerably better experience for fans and there are now no rules against it in the event we were to get promoted: you'd think the major benefit of a move to a new stadium would be the space and opportunity to increase revenue that doesn't exist with the footprint of the main stand at Cappielow, making that growth of the club into a promotion challenging force more likely. You have your all singing all dancing main stand with increased hospitality spaces, offices, media facilities including camera gantry and commentary box (a less monstrously huge version of Partick's Jackie Husband stand) and terracing on every other side, unblemished by seating or the need to construct gantries a few times a season.

Ideally we could find a way to stay at Cappielow long-term, but if a new build is both cheaper than a Cappielow rebuild and allows us more income as above without the constraints of the current main stand footprint we'd be daft not to, provided they're not building a St Mirren style shoebox. Maintaining terracing is a non-negotiable essential aspect of a new build.

[Cet Homme Charmant]

Pretty sure that Golden Casket retained ownership of the car park

[Ferguson]

I doubt I’ll ever live to see us based anywhere but Cappielow, but I’d be interested to see how the (relatively) new stadium rules regarding seating requirements would affect the design if we were to build from scratch.

If terracing, the same style that we already have in the Cowshed/Sinclair Street End, is going to be fit for purpose in a new build then I’d be much more accepting of the idea. 

[LargsTON]

On 2/27/2025 at 7:44 PM, AyrshireTon said:

There was once talk of a stand at the Sinclair street end, going over the road (the drawing in the Tele even had cars and coaches going under it) when John Wilson was in charge (just before HS came along).

Remember Andy Gemmells talk of a super stadium?  I'm sure it was something outrageous like a 20,000 seater

[LargsTON]

https://themortonforum.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/19055-cappielow-park-1980/page/2/

[Waverley]

Again, IIRC, there was talk of moving to the Spango Valley. Long before the Easdales got their hands on the property.