Ambitious: League One Side Southend United Plan To Build Themselves A New 21,000-Seater Stadium

Chris Wright

7th, October 2015

3 Comments

Roots Hall, Southend’s current home (Photo by Pete Norton/Getty Images)

Newly-promoted League One side Southend United have announced plans to build themselves a huge new 21,000-seater stadium.

The Shrimpers, who currently play their home games at their famous old 13,000-capacity Roots Hall ground, are putting the plans for their proposed new Fossetts Farm Stadium on public display next week.

As per the club’s official website, the snazzy new stadium project will also incorporate a luxury hotel and residential development, a multi-screen cinema, shops, ten new restaurants and two indoor ‘soccer domes’ that will be used by both the Southend first team and academy, as well as the local community.

Fossetts-farm-stadium-southend

Image: Southend United

Pies…erm…applauds their optimism.

For the record, Southend boasted an average attendance of 6,024 in League Two last season

Posted in Football League, Newsnow

Share this article: Email

3 Comments

  1. other dave says:

    Other Dave here (the one that was the famous Elvis J. Eel mascot). This is a revival of a plan that was put into motion around 2006/07. At that time, the club had just been relegated from the Championship and sold star striker Freddy Eastwood (remember him? No? ok.). There was money to be had and the club was pushing to become a mainstay in the Championship. However, as the deal slogged through the various local councils, etc. (you Brits and your red tape). There was a great deal of concern in the community that the club would gobble up some of the last ‘green spaces’ the region had. Then the economy started to tank…eventually leaving the club close to administration and clearly shelving the new stadium.

    While the stadium project was in full swing, I spent a handful of afternoons at the high street Sainsbury’s in Southend with a replica model of the stadium, answering the most inane questions about the expansion (namely, “why is an American standing here with his legos”?). I’m not sure where the plan stands now but back in 2007 the club was going to sell the stadium lot to Tesco’s to help fund Fosset’s Farm.

    THE MORE YOU KNOW.

  2. Murray says:

    You call this news? Southend have been pushing for this proposal for over 8 years already!

  3. Paul says:

    Having sold Rootes hall already I guess the patience from the owners of the ground are wearing thin – I’ve been looking forward to a new stadium since 2007, so was my late father ! Even in the days before the premier league a season average in the low teens was good , 21000 will seem very MT :-( come on you shrimpers

Leave a Reply