EXCLUSIVE: Dan Meis speaks to ECHO Everton reporter Chris Beesley at his Manhattan office
On the eve of the inaugural first team fixture in front of fans, Dan Meis has outlined the aspect of watching games at Hill Dickinson Stadium that he believes will be “a little bit scary.”
The US architect who designed the Blues’ new home on the Mersey waterfront will be present for the historic friendly match with Roma on Saturday before returning 15 days later for the first Premier League encounter against Brighton & Hove Albion. While it might be difficult to tell from the outside, the four individual stands inside the venue are all quite different but Meis believe there is one aspect they all have in common, no matter where you sit.
Speaking in an exclusive interview from his Third Avenue office in New York, which can be heard in full in a special edition of the Royal Blue podcast, Meis told the ECHO: “It’s obviously not as quirky and asymmetrical as some of the true historic grounds, because you want the stands to connect and for people to circulate around the whole building, so it’s a bit of a hybrid in that way, but it really does have four different stands and people will have that feeling that they’re in the ‘home end,’ that they’re in the west stand or east stand.
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“It’s not the same as if you’re in the Emirates Stadium or Tottenham. I think people will really love that.
“The other thing is, even if you’re in the highest seat, and I’ve done that myself, you still feel like you’re right on top of the pitch because it’s so steep. Not everyone is going to love it because it’s a little scary, but you feel like you’re in the game, even when you’re the furthest away.”
Given the natural attrition rate in the sector, Meis is asked whether he takes particular satisfaction that this project got finished given the obstacles that Everton faced throughout the process, including fights with relegation, boardroom unrest, the global coronavirus pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and even the threat of a breakaway European ‘Super League.’ He said: “I think so. I can’t take a lot of credit for it other than my one little piece of that.
“It took incredible commitment from the club in the face of a lot of criticism. Obviously, there are a thousand people who came along to help.
“Laing O’Rourke did an incredible job delivering the building, and Pattern and Planit and the other groups that were involved. In my role as a designer, it can often happen that once the project comes into the hands of a contractor, it can change drastically.
“It can get watered down or the things that I felt were important, that weren’t architectural things but were experience things good have easily been value engineered out of the building. But I think everybody throughout the process bought into this vision and that’s been incredibly rewarding to see it.
“Nobody individually has control over it, there are so many factors that go into it. We’ve seen other projects in the UK that have been nice ones, but the contractor suffered in the end, contractors have gone away, owners have had to dig deep to finance them and that puts the club in a different position, there have been a lot of challenges in delivering sports venues in the UK in general.
“That’s a whole different story about Hill Dickinson Stadium that I don’t think everyone does realise. There were so many challenges and so many things had to go right and it really has to deliver the building.”
If you look at the individual renderings, it’s staggering how similar the finished stadium looks to Meis’ original renderings but that is something he takes pride from. He said: “The stadium really does look like the images from my designs. That doesn’t happen always.
“If someone said: ‘How are you different from the other firms that do what you do?’ I think that’s one of the hallmarks of our practice.
“Not because I’m lucky. I think it relates to the fact that the images we create, there’s a lot of meaning to how it looks the way it does.
“It’s not an arbitrary thing. There was so much thought that I wanted it to look like it grew out of the dock with this wave coming over, that very simple idea.
“So much of it, if you changed it, it would lose all the meaning. Throughout my career, I’ve tried really hard that those images we created at in the beginning are used to tell a story that we want the owner to really believe in and buy into.
“It has to be that again or the whole process doesn’t make sense. But in Everton I think, there was some fear of that and there was this moment where I felt it was completely out of my control and I didn’t even know whether I was going to have a voice in what was happening but for all the fear of it, they’ve done a great job in matching up to those original ideas.”
The capacity of Hill Dickinson Stadium will be 51,769 while the biggest gate at Goodison Park for its final Premier League season was recorded as being 39,376 against Leicester City on February 1. This means that Everton now have scope to play in front of a third more fans and although Goodison had 16 crowds of over 70,000 got Blues matches, they didn’t attract over 50,000 for a home game for over 38 years since a League Cup quarter-final against Liverpool on January 21, 1987.
Everton have only once enjoyed an average attendance north of 50,000 over a season (51,603 for the 1962/63 title-winning season), so if they can fill Hill Dickinson Stadium, they can now play in front of the biggest regular crowds in their history. It’s a point that Meis has remained undeterred upon in the face of objectors who believe both he and the club should have constructed something larger given that Liverpool, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, West Ham United and soon-to-be Manchester City all have capacities of over 60,000 and Manchester United have long had over 70,000.
He said: “I understand it on a simple comparison level that people want to be elite and somehow bigger is better, but I very passionately tried to argue how important it is to have the building right sized. It’s incredible how much impact the fans have on the game but if you have a building that’s only three quarters full, the players feel that, and it does change the tempo of the game and how they play.
“Most fans would argue that we have this incredible waiting list and of course we’d fill this 70-80,000 capacity building. But it just doesn’t really work that way.
“When people know that there’s always a seat available, they’re much less likely to buy a season ticket. If the club doesn’t know how much revenue is going to come, it’s hard for them to plan their business.
“It was also a reminder that for all this chest-thumping and ambition, it’s a business in the end. You really do have to right size the building.
“I also often use the example that Billy Joel played Madison Square Garden like a hundred times. You can argue: ‘Why don’t you build a 200,000-seat arena as you could sell it out?’ But that’s just not the way it works.
“It’s going to feel huge compared to Goodison, but hopefully still pretty intimate.”
For Meis though right now, the overwhelming emotion is one of excitement as he and Evertonians both look forward to the long-awaited first day in Vauxhall after 133 years in Walton at Goodison Park, the first purpose-built football ground in England. He said: “It is going to be really fun to see it full. There are a lot of people who haven’t even been inside the dock wall yet.
“From the fan zone, to the experience on the pitch, seeing a real game. There’s still a lot of trepidation and I hope people love it as much as I do.
“There are all those feelings but now I’m feeling: ‘How do I do the next one?’
“It’s not: ‘How do I do another design?’ it’s how do I find another club I can fall in love with and hopefully embrace me in the same way? It’s not an easy thing.
“My message would be that it’s been a long road and there have been a lot of ups and downs – and sometimes, too many downs. But I think in general, it’s a fanbase that keeps the faith, they know there’s an incredible history there, and this really is a turning point.
“You have a new ownership, you have a manager that knows the club well and obviously we have already seen how the players have reacted to that. Having the power of a new building and almost twice as many fans on a game basis, it’s going to be such a boost.
“There’s nothing stopping the club from being a top team in the Premier League in a short time and all of this contributes to that.”
Click here to listen to Chris Beesley’s exclusive interview from New York with Dan Meis in full