Colin Povey has outlined his pride in Edgbaston’s brand new Pavilion End development which is now virtually complete and set to be officially opened next month.
But Warwickshire’s chief executive also stressed that much work still lies ahead behind the scenes to fully exploit the new facilities within the £32 million edifice.
The architects and builders have been and gone and in the last two weeks 300 workers have been on site at the stadium fitting the interiors to the new ‘Master Plan’ development.
On July 25, His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh will drop in to perform the official opening.
But with £20million to repay to Birmingham City Council over the next two decades, the hard work now begins for Povey and his commercial staff.
Warwickshire need to look under every conceivable stone for revenue-rasing potential if they are to meet the monster repayment schedule which faces them - £1million per year for the next 20 years.
In the prevailing financial climate, that is a huge challenge. But Povey has no qualms about the club’s capacity to meet it head-on.
“What we have here now, first and foremost, is a world-class cricket stadium,” said the CEO.
“We will undoubtedly have some of the best facilities in English cricket and, I would argue, world cricket.
"We have transformed our players and media facilities and spectator amenities for the big-match days and that is vitally important for a ground of the heritage and tradition of Edgbaston.
“But equally we have tried to develop space that we can use on those 360 days of the year when we are not rammed to the rafters with international cricket.
"We have facilities that our corporate clients will find very attractive on non-match days and we need those revenues to come in to help support the cricketing initiatives and make the stadium really work.
“We intend it to be a venue of choice for as many people as possible as often as possible. Whatever sport you are in these days, very few grounds can rely on their sole usage for income.
Even if you are in Premiership football, if you are only using the stadium twice a week for 40 weeks a year you will struggle to support a huge infrastructure.
Most sports that don’t have the TV wealth that football generates have to look at their business model and how to use their facilities across a whole range of activities other than it’s primary purpose.
“We need to double our levels of non-match day income. We are lucky that we already have quite a healthy level of non-match day business and quite a lot of community use of the cricket facilities.
"We just need to round that model out and do make what we are doing bigger and better in the same way as we are making the stadium bigger and better.”
For that strategy to succeed, Warwickshire know they have to attract people from far beyond the cricket fraternity.
“We have a really loyal fan base for domestic and international cricket which is a great place to start,” he said.
“But we will have to change perceptions of Edgbaston among other people.
"It is quite fortunate that now you can’t really miss the ground at you drive past and we have quite a lot of passing traffic.
“Our mission is to showcase those new facilities as much as we can to people. There is no doubt that Edgbaston will be a very different place from now on.”
