Planning and development

Before moving to the Pride Park Stadium, Derby County had played at the Baseball Ground since 1895. Although at its peak the ground had held over 40,000 (the record attendance being 41,826 for a match against Tottenham Hotspur in 1969)^[2] the Taylor Report, actioned after the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster had seen the legal requirement for English football stadia to become all-seater by the 1994–95 season^[3] resulting in its capacity dwindling to just 17,500 by the mid-1990s, not enough for the then-ambitious second-tier club.^[2] An additional problem came with the ground's wooden components (considered unacceptable in the wake of the Bradford City stadium fire in 1985) and, in February 1996, chairman Lionel Pickering made the decision to move the club to a new stadium, having originally planned to rebuild the Baseball Ground as a 26,000-seat stadium.^[3]

The club originally planned to build a purpose-built 30,000-seat stadium at Pride Park, with 4,000 car parking spaces, a restaurant and conference facilities, a fitness centre, a supporters club and a new training ground. A year later the stadium plan was changed to become part of a £46 million project by the Stadivarios group that would also include a 10,000-seat indoor arena.^[3] Peter Gadsby, however, the club's associate director at the time and head of the Miller Birch construction company, felt the project was both too ambitious and expensive and instead plans were drawn up by new chairman Lionel Pickering to modernise and extend the Baseball Ground to hold 26,000,^[4] at a cost of £10 million.^[3] However, despite signing a construction agreement with Taylor Woodrow, Gadsby suggested the club make a second attempt at securing the then-redeveloping Pride Park business park, settling with Derby City Council for a smaller site than previously agreed.^[3] On 21 February 1996, prior to a match against Luton Town at The Baseball Ground, the club announced to supporters the decision to move to a £16 million state-of-the-art stadium for the start of the 1997–98 season.

Derby City Council were paid £1.8 million for the land and the club's four directors – Lionel Pickering, Peter Gadsby, Stuart Webb and John Kirkland each paid £2.5 million towards a package deal to pay for the stadium.^[3] The stadium itself was based upon Middlesbrough's Riverside Stadium, which opened in 1995, though it had more than 30 amendments to the original plans.^[3] After toying with the idea of naming the new ground "The New Baseball Ground", it was settled that the club's new home would be called The Pride Park Stadium.

Construction

Engaging the same architects as Middlesbrough, the Miller Partnership,^[5] Derby's plans predominantly followed those of the Riverside Stadium, with the first stage being a detached main stand facing a horseshoe running unbroken round the other three sides, with the possibility of the corners being filled in later and the ground's capacity being increased if and when necessary by raising the horseshoe roof.^[6]

Pickering laid the foundation stone in November 1995^[5] and, after decontamination, the first of the more than 1,000 pre-cast concrete piles^[3] was sunk in September 1996.^[5] This was followed by 6,500 tonnes of concrete and more than 2,100 tonnes of steelwork as the ground began to take shape.^[3] Tapping into the excitement amongst supporters, the club set up a visitors centre which included a computer-generated tour of the stadium taking shape^[5] and attracted more than 75,000 fans.^[3] The opportunity was also made available for supporters to buy special bricks – on to which they could engrave a message of their choosing – which would be set around the outside of the completed stadium.^[3]

The weather of the 1996 winter was not kind to the contractors but extra urgency was provided by the news that the stadium was to be opened by the Queen.^[5] This news – the first time the Queen had opened a new football stadium – ensured that the workers, at one point behind schedule, had to pull out all of the stops to get the stadium completed in time. The pitch stood at 105 metres (344 ft) long and 68 metres (223 ft) wide, meeting the requirements for an international venue, and measured five yards (4.6 m) longer and four yards (3.7 m) wider than the pitch at the Baseball Ground. It also came with a three-metre (9.8 ft) grass margin.

Opening

The East Stand.

The Queen opened the stadium on 18 July 1997 in front of 30,000 spectators. By this time the south west corner, which stood between the main stand and the horseshoe, had been completed. The interest from potential corporate clients had been so high that Pickering pressed the board to go the full distance with the stadium, raising the final initial costs of completing the stadium to £22 million. Work was still in progress on the remaining corner on the opening day, leaving Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh to jokingly ask Taylor Woodrow contract manager Ross Walters, "Haven't you been paid yet?"^[7] An overture to the opening ceremony came two weeks later, on 4 August 1997, with the first ever game at Pride Park Stadium being played against Italian side Sampdoria, the match ending in a 1–0 defeat with Vincenzo Montella scoring the only goal of the game. The attendance of 29,041 was the highest for a Derby County home game in 20 years.^[8][9] The fixture kicked off a tradition of pre-season friendlies being held against European teams at the ground, with Barcelona (twice), CSKA Moscow, Athletic Bilbao, Lazio, Ajax and Mallorca all visiting the stadium over the next six years.^[9]

The first competitive fixture to be completed at the new stadium came on 30 August 1997 and ended in a 1–0 win against Barnsley in front of 27,232, with Stefano Eranio scoring the only goal from the penalty spot. The stadium's inaugural competitive fixture against Wimbledon was called off with the score at 2–1 after the floodlights went out in the 11th minute of the second half. Referee Uriah Rennie abandoned the match following a delay of more than half-an-hour while engineers tried unsuccessfully to restart two failed generators. Gadsby said, "We had 11 maintenance people on duty including six electricians but nobody has yet worked out why both generators failed. There was a bang of such strength that it fused them both."^[10] This proved to be the only major problem with the new stadium, which delivered everything which had been promised of it and went on to gain international recognition.^[7] Later additions to the ground raised the capacity to 33,597 and a final cost of £28 million.

Ownership issues

Although the financing of the stadium's construction was carefully structured so that the club paid and owned the ground without encroaching on funds reserved for the development of the team, the club's eventual relegation from the top flight in 2002 saw it enter financial crisis^[11] and eventually it was temporarily entered into receivership by The Co-operative Bank, who instantly installed a new board composed of John Sleightholme, Jeremy Keith and Steve Harding, for the cost of £1 each. Financial circumstances worsened as the debt spiralled to £30 million plus and an unpopular^[12] refinancing scheme was put in place which saw the stadium sold to the "mysterious"^[13] Panama-based ABC Corporation and the club paying rent of £1 million a year to play there, which local journalist Gerald Mortimer described as "an affront ... to those who put everything into building [the ground]".^[13] The ownership trio of Sleightholme, Keith and Harding were nicknamed "The Three Amigos" and, after came under increasing criticism from the Derby's support, in the form of two separate supporters groups, the RamsTrust and the Rams Protest Group (RPG), they eventually sold out to a group of local businessmen, dubbed "The League of Gentlemen" by the local press, led by former board member Peter Gadsby, in April 2006. The Gadsby-led consortium returned Pride Park to club ownership.^[14] Three years later, Murdo Mackay, Jeremy Keith and finance director Andrew McKenzie were charged with taking a secret commission worth £440,625 from the club and were sentenced to a combined seven-and-a-half years in prison.^[15] In August 2009, the club still owed £15 million on the mortgage of the Pride Park Stadium^[16] which was later revealed to be due to be paid off in 2016.^[17]

Pride Plaza redevelopment and ground expansion

Clough and Taylor statue.

During the 2006–07 season, in which Derby earned promotion back to the Premier League after five years, the club released details of a proposed £20 million development of the area surrounding the stadium, to include the building of a 165-bed hotel, bars, restaurants and office space, to create a local service centre for employers located on the Pride Park business park. Three squares would also be introduced which would be named after legendary figures associated with the club – all-time leading goalscorer Steve Bloomer, the club's greatest manager Brian Clough and former chairman Lionel Pickering, who had died in 2006. The club insisted no money would be taken away from the team to pay for the development.^[18] On 9 November 2007, Derby City Council approved the plans. Following promotion to the Premier League in the 2006–07 season, the club announced plans to expand the capacity of the stadium up to 44,000 for the start of the 2008–09 season, if the club successfully survived. The plans included adding rows of seats to the north, south and east stands and would have allowed the club to break its current club record attendance.^[19] The club, however, failed to maintain its top-flight status and when, in January 2008, it was sold into new American ownership, in the form of General Sports and Entertainment^[20] both the plaza plan and the ground expansion initiatives were scrapped.

In 2008, a nine-foot-high bronze statue of Brian Clough and Peter Taylor – who had managed the club between 1967 and 1973 – was commissioned to adorn the north west portion of the ground to be called Unity Plaza. The statue was designed by Andrew Edwards and features both Clough and Taylor holding the League Championship trophy which they won with the club in 1972. It was unveiled on 27 August 2010.^[21]

2018 World Cup and 2012 Olympic bids

In 2009, Pride Park was earmarked as a possible FIFA World Cup venue when Derby County announced its intention to apply to be one of the host cities as part of England's bid for the 2018 World Cup Finals, with Derby chief executive Tom Glick saying, "What we [the board] know is that Derby already has the core elements to be a host city ... We are going to find out what the requirements are but we are certainly expecting that the requirement would be at least 40,000 seats. The ability to do that at Pride Park Stadium exists, the land exists. So we know that if we were successful, that is something that could be done."^[22]

The South Stand (right).

To qualify as a host stadium, the ground would need to expand to at least 40,000 capacity and the club announced that three methods could be undertaken to achieve this, two of which would leave the stadium permanently expanded.^[23] Option A would see the additional capacity supplied by temporary stands erected behind each goal, removing the current roof, and be supported by steel structures, with all the stands removed after the World Cup and the original roofing replaced.^[23] Option B would also see temporary seating built in the north and south stands as well as an additional structure placed on the east stand which the club could choose to keep, increasing the capacity to 39,000.^[23] The final Option, C, would see the removal of seating from the north, south and east stands and three new 20 row decks placed in each stand. This again came with the option of retaining the east stand expansion, raising the stadium capacity to a permanent 37,000.^[23] The club itself stated that it preferred to explore temporary, rather than permanent, expansion, saying "We'd like to meet the World Cup standards for matches when it comes to expansion but then perhaps scale down the stadium to something closer to where we are right now. That way, we can keep the intimacy and special atmosphere that has almost become a hallmark of going to a Derby County match. When the team play at home, having a full stadium is a huge advantage because it creates a brilliant atmosphere. What we wouldn't want to do is have a stadium that all of a sudden was too big after the World Cup had gone."^[23] On 16 December 2009, Derby's campaign was rejected by the FA, along with Hull and Leicester to local rival bid by Nottingham Forest. Tom Glick later commented, "We're all greatly disappointed. Thousands of hours of hard work has been put in across the city from a number of agencies. We need to get some feedback as to why the bid was not successful."^[24]

The club was later unsuccessful in its attempt to be the Midlands football venue for the 2012 Summer Olympics, losing out to Coventry City's Ricoh Arena,^[25] with the selection committee citing the fact the stadium "has fewer dressing rooms and no hotel" in comparison to the Coventry-based stadium.^[26]

Additional ground developments

On 17 January 2009, a bust of Steve Bloomer was unveiled next to the home dugout.^[4][27]

The Plaza @ Pride Park development

On 3 October 2011, Derby County announced that they had submitted plans to Derby City Council for a £7 million development of land outside the stadium, which the club named "The Plaza @ Pride Park".^[28]

These plans included five cafes/restaurants, two convenience stores and 2,000 square metres of office space. These plans had been scaled down from the planned £20 million pound development proposed in 2007.^[29] Derby County CEO Tom Glick said that these plans would help the club deal with the new Financial Fair Play regulations which were to be introduced in the Football League from 2012, as revenue from the plaza would be reinvested back into the club.^[28]

This planned development also coincided with a plan from the city council to build a multi-use sports arena on the same site as the proposed plaza.^[29]

On 12 January 2012, Derby City Council's planning control committee gave planning permission for the development.^[30] Chief executive Tom Glick said that the club had moved to the next stage of the development, finding a development company to build the plaza.^[30]

It was announced on 3 May 2013 that the first phase was to be launched after the last game of the 2012–13 season when Derby County faced Millwall. Located in the north east corner of the stadium and close to the DCFC megastore, the initial phase would provide a mixture of retail and restaurant units totalling 7,000sq.ft. The development was being undertaken jointly by the club and Cedar House Investments, part of former chairman Peter Gadsby's Ark Capital group of companies. John Vicars, chief operating officer at Derby County, welcomed the launch by saying, "We see this development attracting perhaps a convenience retailer, and a restaurant to complement the facilities already available on Pride Park and to provide a greater choice. With the opening of the new multi-use sports arena and velodrome adjacent to the club, there will be even greater demand for these facilities." Peter Gadsby said: "The area is already a proven destination for leading occupiers including Greggs, Frankie & Benny's, Subway and Starbucks. I am particularly keen that this scheme will add to the success of Pride Park and provide further amenities for the 10,000 people that are working in the area. It is good news that this phase of the development will create a further 25 jobs."^[31]

A phase two of the plaza will be considered once the velodrome has opened and will add further to the vitality and vibrancy of Pride Park. Derby-based FHP have been appointed as letting agents for the scheme.

Renaming the stadium

On 7 December 2013, Pride Park was renamed the iPro Stadium in a £7 million sponsorship deal with global sports drink company iPro. The club announced the cancellation of the sponsorship deal on 18 November 2016, with the stadium's name reverting to Pride Park.^[32]