The Kingston Communications Stadium and associated community sports complex offers Hull state-of-the-art facilities for all types of professional and amateur sports, embracing the whole city.
OWNERSHIP
The Stadium is owned by the Hull City Council and managed by the Stadium Management Company (SMC) who hold a 50 year lease.
THE LOCATION
Located next to a Victorian Park, the stadium complex is the first in the UK in a parkland setting. The Stadium manages 34.2 acres of land.
Because the Stadium is located in parkland and close to the City Centre, a Green Travel Plan had to be put in place.
DESIGN/CONSTRUCTION/CAPACITY
Designed by the Miller Partnership, adopting initial concept proposals by Arup Associates, the stadium comprises a state-of-the-art all-seater spectator arena with a capacity of 25,404.
It is designed as a single tier, asymmetrical bowl of approximately 20,000 seats with a second upper tier to the West Stand of over 5,000 seats.
Future expansion of the East Stand will be possible to raise the stadium capacity to 30,000.
Capacity of each individual stand:
North: 4,000
East: 6,000
South: 4,000
West Stand Lower: 6,000
West Stand Upper: 5,000
Also incorporated in the Stadium complex is a 1,500 seat Sports Arena, skate park, two multi-use all weather pitches, and a community learning zone, complete with classrooms, health & fitness suite, cyber café and library. The Council’s Sports Development department is also located at the Stadium.
The total project cost was approximately £44 million.
Construction of the Stadium took 14 months to complete.
Approximately 3225 tonnes of steel was used in the construction of the Stadium Complex.
It took approximately 6469 cubic metres of concrete to build the Stadium.
COLOURS
The seat colours are predominantly black with a white and amber band around the stadium and logos depicted in amber and white.
The Four external columns, which can be seen from the exterior of the Building, incorporate the corporate colours of the Hull City Council – blue and yellow.
PLAYING SURFACE
The grass surface measures 114m x 74m providing a FIFA standard-sized football pitch of 105m x 68m and a full-length rugby league pitch of 100m x 68m with in goal areas 5m deep.
The grass is 100% natural, comprised of 90% sand and 10% loam. It also has 3% additive of man-made fibre.
The fibre is woven into the roots of the grass and goes down 200mm. If threaded together, these fibres would circle the globe!
The pitch has an automatic irrigation system as well as under pitch heating.
When the temperature drops to below 4°c undersoil heating provides enough heat to raise the temperature to 9°c.
The water porosity of the pitch at source is 25-30mm per hour.
There are 22 miles of under soil heating pipes.
CORPORATE ROOMS
The Stadium includes 2,000 square feet of conference and exhibition space which caters for private or corporate functions.
This corporate accommodation includes 28 executive boxes, a restaurant overlooking the pitch, 4 banqueting/hospitality suites and the Viking FM supporters bar.
The stadium hosts in excess of 100 events per month and is proud to host events such as Biz Week, incorporating the Yorkshire International Business Convention.
Executive Box 28 is used as a studio for Sky television when required.
Dependent on location, the cost per season to hire an executive box is between £15,000-£18,000.
TRAFFIC
The site, including the Walton Street fairground, accommodates up to 1,100 vehicles.
The link bridge from Londesborough Street to the Stadium takes away approximately 30% of traffic from the Stadium.
MISC.
Between events, overnight changes need to be made to the Stadium. These include pitch markings, posts and stadium cleaning.
The target evacuation time for the entire Stadium at full capacity is 8 minutes.
A generator of 600KVA supplies enough power to evacuate the stadium safely if a powercut occurs.
The floodlights at the Stadium are 1200 lux, compared to 274 lux at Boothferry Park and 250 lux at the Boulevard.
The Stadium has a total of 57 CCTV cameras.
A computerised turnstile monitoring system linked into the control room, keeps check on how many people are entering each stand.
