Knighthead have pledged another £15million of investment to get Birmingham City’s existing facilities up to standard before the Sports Quarter is built.
The American investment firm, which is headed up by Blues chairman Tom Wagner, recently announced plans to build a Sports Quarter in the heart of Birmingham. Wagner wants a stadium, training facilities and an academy all under one umbrella and plans to use the 48-acre site formerly known as Birmingham Wheels to build it.
Plans are in place for the future but Knighthead want Blues’ existing home, St Andrew’s, and their two training grounds - the Elite Performance and Innovation Centre (EPIC) in Henley-in-Arden and Wast Hills - to meet the required standards. That is why Knighthead will spend a further £15m on St Andrew’s and the club’s training grounds over the summer months.
A bulk of that money will be spent on constructing two fan parks at St Andrew’s - a temporary pop up solution in the Kop car park and a permanent one in the Main Stand car park behind the Royal George. It is hoped Blues fans will be able to congregate at the latter to watch England in the Euros.
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Speaking at last week’s Open House, head of infrastructure Nick Smith told a group of Blues fans: “Over the summer we are going to deliver a further 22 projects with an investment of £15m. Obviously we have some of that investment going on the training ground but I want to focus on the fan experience areas.
“When you arrive back at St Andrew’s @ Knighthead Park next season there will be two new fan parks that will be free to access. One will be in the Kop which will be a pop up fan park. Onto the Main Stand car park, this will be our second and permanent fan park. Over 1,000 people per match day will be able to attend this fan park. We will welcome families, we have a kids play area, five-a-side and teqball. We have an adults area with food and bars and a stage where we will be putting on local bands, acts and comedians.
“We will have a hospitality area with a TV studio. We will have an area for match days and, hopefully if all goes well, and I can get this done before the end of the Euros, you’ll have somewhere to come and watch the quarter-finals, semi-finals and final and England go on to win the Euros.”
Smith has led Knighthead’s redevelopment of St Andrew’s, Wast Hills and EPIC, where significant work has been undertaken in the last 12 months to transform a facility built for rugby into one that can house an elite football team.
EPIC only had one training pitch when Blues’ first team relocated there in March 2023 after the fire at Wast Hills. A second grass pitch was laid at the beginning of this year to give Gary Rowett - and his predecessors in the Blues hotseat - the chance to alternate.
“In the summer when we moved the first team across to EPIC there was only one pitch and it was a rugby pitch, not a football pitch,” said Smith. “They are different constructions and it had taken a lot of beating through studs and scrums and everything else. We have a fantastic grounds team over there and they managed to get it football ready for the summer.
“But we knew that when we entered into the winter period we were going to face challenges with the usage of this pitch because it was constructed differently to what we would have in a football stadium. The foresight was to start growing a pitch in a turf farm in the north of England. As we entered winter, we harvested that pitch and reconstructed a new pitch on top of the artificial pitch at EPIC.
“Harvesting a pitch in winter - if any of you have tried to grow grass in your gardens in winter - transporting it across the country and constructing it on top of a synthetic pitch is very, very ambitious. Today the first team have two pitches which they can train on. I think this is a huge achievement and a distinct display of how we want to operate at Birmingham City.”
Smith was also able to reveal the remarkable transformation at the lesser seen Wast Hills, where Blues women and the academy are based. The changing rooms and canteen that were ravaged by the blaze have now been repaired and updated.
“Last summer we entered into a phase that we call within our leadership team, proof of life, and this was about setting out our strategic direction and our ambition of the club. We’ve led 52 projects with an investment of over £12.5m,” Smith said.
“Some of it you have seen a lot of when you’ve come to a matchday: new pitch, new branding, new changing rooms. There has been a complete revamp of the stadium.
“In the last six months we have moved into a fix it phase where we have delivered 34 projects at a cost of a further £6m. There are many stories that I could tell you about the fix it phase which has been significantly challenging but I want to highlight a couple.
“One is at Wast Hills. These are the exact same rooms that you saw in the fire. These are the dining room, the kitchen, and those are the changing rooms which the women are now going to change into. We are super excited about what we’ve achieved. Phase one is done, phase two will complete in two weeks’ time and phase three, which is on our journey to becoming a Category One academy, will be done by the time the new season starts.”
