Tom Wagner drops update on new Birmingham City 62,000 seater stadium plans | OneFootball

The Sports Quarter project is very much heading in the right direction.

Birmingham City chairman Tom Wagner has provided a positive update on the progress of the club's new 62,000-seater stadium and the Sports Quarter that will encompass it.

The £3 billion total project is set to be a revolutionary one for the east Birmingham site that Blues' new home and other facilities will be built on.

They recently received a major boost when the Government announced that they plan on spending £2.4 billion to improve local transport in the area, something that Wagner had previously said would be essential to their plans.

Tom Wagner provides new stadium update to Birmingham supporters

As well as the new mega stadium, new training facilities for the first-team and the academy, plus plenty of other commercial and hospitality amenities, will be constructed on the old Birmingham Wheels site. It's a project that is set to create 8,500 jobs, as per Birmingham Live, and, as City supporters will be happy to hear, it's progressing well.

"It's running full speed ahead," Wagner said to Blues+ about the Sports Quarter, which is set to open after the beginning of the next decade.

"We're in the process of final interviews for the architects. The planning process has been ongoing. There are an incredible number of people working on this full-time. The big hurdle that was out of our control was transport - we got that.

"Adderley Park station will be completely rebuilt to accommodate full-sized trains to literally stop in the middle of the Sports Quarter. We'll connect central Birmingham out to our site and eventually onto the airport.

"We'll do significant improvements on traffic and flow, so getting people in and out of the Sports Quarter will be far better than what we experience today - despite the fact that we'll have more than double the number of people coming in and out on a daily basis. It's not just a stadium.

"It's a stadium, it's a training ground for men's, women's and academy. We'll have a full-sized arena, we'll have a show pitch for the women's side. We'll have a hotel, housing and office. It's going to be a true hub of activity. There'll be a lot going on and something that isn't only a Blues attraction but a Birmingham, West Midlands and national attraction."

Birmingham are on track to meet the demands of their Sports Quarter project

The largest stadium by capacity in the Championship this season is Sheffield Wednesday's home at Hillsborough, at just shy of 40,000. Birmingham's project will be able to hold more than 50 per cent as many people as the iconic Steel City ground can.

It's rare nowadays that construction projects are, one, within budget and, two, completed on time. That's not the biggest worry, though for Wagner and his Blues. What if the 2030s rolled around and this massive change that they'd been working on for the best part of a decade came to fruition and they were unable to convince 60,000 people to come and watch them?

That is pretty much the worst-case scenario for them. But, if their only game so far in the Championship is anything to go buy, they'll be able to sell themselves as a Premier League club sooner rather than later.

Wagner's ambitions on the pitch are equally as big and bold as his ones off of it too. Being an established top-flight team by the time the Sports Quarter is operational will be a huge thing for the chairman and the club as a whole.