Work on Wrexham's Racecourse Ground, which will see a new Kop stand built to make it a four-sided stadium, will commence on June 1 with Hollywood owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney intent on following through with their plans.
The Wales-based club earned promotion back to the football league after a gruelling season-long title race with Notts County. The two sides cleared 100 points, but only Wrexham secured the one automatic promotion spot and the title. Luckily for Notts County, they too earned promotion to League Two through the Play-Offs, beating Chesterfield on penalties at Wembley.
As part of co-owners Reynolds and McElhenney's investment into Wrexham, work on a new 5,500-capacity stand will commence on June 1, which will also feature a hospitality lounge, office, and retail space for the club, along with facilities for the Wrexham AFC Community Trust. The stand is expected to open ahead of the 2024-25 season.
5,000 of the capacity will be for general admission and seats will come with a rail in front to meet all-seater criteria of Uefa's Category 4 status. "Back in February 2021, when we first became custodians of the Club, it was identified that reverting the Racecourse Ground to a four-sided stadium was a priority for us," co-chairmen McElhenney and Reynolds said last June.
"The desire to achieve this objective has only been multiplied by the fact that the sold-out signs were a regular feature at the Racecourse Ground, and we want the Club to be accessible to everyone, so the increased capacity is key to achieving this.
"We would encourage everyone to support the planning application when it is submitted and would like to thank Wrexham Council, Welsh Government & Wrexham Glyndwr University (together the Gateway Partnership) who are fully committed to making the new Kop a reality.
"Finally, a big thank you to our design team, AFL Architects, Gardiner & Theobald, Ramboll, Savills, and Royal Pilgrim.”
More recently, Reynolds joked that he and McElhenney would like two apartments in the new Kop stand. Something similar can be seen at now-League One side Leyton Orient, with a block of nearby flats having a first-class view of the on-pitch action.
"Our greatest goal is to redevelop the opposite end to the Kop, I guess," Reynolds has told the RobRyanRed podcast. "What do we call that? Everyone has a different name for it, so I’m not sure. Our dream is to have two apartments in there!”
Alongside giving the Racecourse Ground a much-needed facelift, there is also plans for a new Wrexham training ground.
"We are working on that pretty much daily," Reynolds added. "The training ground is not something that you take trivially, right? So it is something that is going to need to exist for decades, if not centuries to come. So it’s something Rob and I have been working on. Well, we’ve been working on that since last year, really.”
McElhenney added: "I mean, in earnest, I don’t know if it was originally part of the mission statement, I can’t remember, but I know it was something that we focused on very early, as was the Kop, as you know and is well documented. I know that we’ve been making giant strides forward, but we don’t have anything concrete yet, but we’re circling a few things.”
