'bunker suites'?
Liverpool's new owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, have ordered an urgent review of the club's new £215 million home to see if it is possible to make the proposed 60,000-seat stadium at Stanley Park even better.
Chief executive Rick Parry is due to fly to Dallas next week to meet Hicks and Gillett, along with American architects HKS, who have been asked to look at Liverpool's designs to see what changes can be made.
Among the ideas being considered 'bunker suites' – executive boxes built underground, with elevators to and from the seats in the stand above.
The idea was developed by President George W Bush when he was joint owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, which Hicks now owns, to offer a place for his father, who was President at the time, to watch games securely.
More are planned for the ground at Arlington and at the 100,000-capacity stadium being built nearby for the Dallas Cowboys, which is due to open in 2009.
Hicks revealed: "We met with HKS yesterday and we said, 'Here are the constraints, take a fresh look and see if there are other ideas we can incorporate on the inside that would make it more fan-friendly, produce more revenues and give more customer satisfaction', so they are coming up with ideas.
"What we have to do is strike a balance between new ideas and Yankee ingenuity at the same time as protecting the traditions of Liverpool and Anfield. We're going to do that very quickly.
"We kind of stumbled into the concept of the bunker suites. But it's essentially an underground living room where you can go down and have fine food, fine wine, big-screen TVs, and then go up and watch the pitch live."
Hicks wants to replicate the way he has used sports stadiums to regenerate run-down areas of Dallas. He has done it with the American Airlines Centre, a £210 million arena which is home to the Dallas Stars and Mavericks.
He also has plans to redevelop 1.2 million square feet of land next to the 49,000-capacity Arlington stadium into a leisure, retail and residential complex in a £260 million project, which will open in 2009.
Liverpool's new owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, have ordered an urgent review of the club's new £215 million home to see if it is possible to make the proposed 60,000-seat stadium at Stanley Park even better.
Chief executive Rick Parry is due to fly to Dallas next week to meet Hicks and Gillett, along with American architects HKS, who have been asked to look at Liverpool's designs to see what changes can be made.
Among the ideas being considered 'bunker suites' – executive boxes built underground, with elevators to and from the seats in the stand above.
The idea was developed by President George W Bush when he was joint owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, which Hicks now owns, to offer a place for his father, who was President at the time, to watch games securely.
More are planned for the ground at Arlington and at the 100,000-capacity stadium being built nearby for the Dallas Cowboys, which is due to open in 2009.
Hicks revealed: "We met with HKS yesterday and we said, 'Here are the constraints, take a fresh look and see if there are other ideas we can incorporate on the inside that would make it more fan-friendly, produce more revenues and give more customer satisfaction', so they are coming up with ideas.
"What we have to do is strike a balance between new ideas and Yankee ingenuity at the same time as protecting the traditions of Liverpool and Anfield. We're going to do that very quickly.
"We kind of stumbled into the concept of the bunker suites. But it's essentially an underground living room where you can go down and have fine food, fine wine, big-screen TVs, and then go up and watch the pitch live."
Hicks wants to replicate the way he has used sports stadiums to regenerate run-down areas of Dallas. He has done it with the American Airlines Centre, a £210 million arena which is home to the Dallas Stars and Mavericks.
He also has plans to redevelop 1.2 million square feet of land next to the 49,000-capacity Arlington stadium into a leisure, retail and residential complex in a £260 million project, which will open in 2009.
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