Bees inspired Dee chief over ground plans
John Nelms admits he took inspiration from Brentford’s stadium as the Dundee managing director unveiled plans for a brand new 12,500-capacity stadium at Camperdown.
The Dark Blues have aspirations to move by the summer of 2025 and the American wants to emulate the stadium the Bees built more than three years ago.
The plans include a 120-room hotel and Nelms hopes to get the application approved soon. He said: “Brentford, the stadium they built between three railroad tracks was really good and they’ve done some really innovative things within their stadium.
“During the rugby, they have a thing called ‘the Craic’, which is a hospitality suite that, at the end of the match, they turn into a live music space. So, when we have a football match on, if we have extra space in a hospitality suite, that’s something else we can provide to fans, so that was quite good.
“They’ve done a lot on a very small piece of land. A lot of these places we go to, I ask what they wish they could have done differently, and every single one has been quite open. That was a huge learning experience.
“I won’t name names and disparage them, but some of the mistakes you think ‘How can that have happened?’. One stadium, they didn’t build gantries for television. So any time they have a televised game they lose nearly 1,000 seats because they have to put up gantries. They didn’t think that through.
“We take all these things into account and that’s how we’ve got to where we are.”
Meanwhile, Nelms praised current boss Tony Docherty and is targeting the same level of consistency in 2024 that has seen Dundee battling for a top-six spot.
“I’ve enjoyed this season. Even when it’s tough we enjoy what we do, but this year has been exceptional. Tony Docherty coming in and the way he works, the players work and the staff work, the way that this year has accumulated it’s still not easy and there’s a lot of things happening behind the scenes.
“We’re very pleased on where we are right now – this is our first year back in the Premiership – and how it’s going.”