Interview: Dan Meis Dares To Dream

The man who designed Everton’s new Hill Dickinson Stadium talks about a decade-long journey from drawing to delivery.

Have you ever loved your job so much you’ve got a tattoo of it? The American who designed Everton’s new stadium has. The club crest on his skin is perhaps a physical testimony of how the much talked-about 52,000-plus capacity stadium got under the skin of architect Dan Meis.

“I was looking back at one of my first sketches that was done in 2015. It’s been a 10-year journey we’ve been through, so you cannot help but get attached to this stadium.

“It was clear from the beginning that this wasn’t going to be just another project. We’ve been through COVID and lots of challenges on and off the pitch. But, in the end, I’m thrilled with it. I think it is everything that we hoped for.”

His CV stands out from the crowd, much like the iconic sports venues he’s designed. Amongst them the home of the LA Lakers basketball team, Seattle’s baseball field and the stadiums of the Philadelphia Eagles and Cincinnati Bengals.

From his studio in downtown Los Angeles, he still recalls the trepidation he had about an American being handed the reigns to create an iconic British football stadium.

“When I was told Everton wanted to meet about the new stadium, I wondered if it was a mistake. I knew of the history of the club and I knew designing a football stadium which played to the noise the crowds make was a daunting task.

“On the journey over for the first meeting, I had a number of times when I considered turning back because I had some doubts we could match that expectation.”

With Goodison Park very much the beating heart of the club for over 130 years, any stadium builder was going to have to work hard to win hearts away from the Grand Old Lady of Goodison.

“I had a lot of concerns about moving from Goodison which, for all her challenges, is one of the greatest places to see a football match in the world,” Meis continued.

“And so I did fear that fans were going to feel like they were really giving up more than they were getting.”

But Meis had a simple philosophy to ensure that passion was built into the new design. “It’s not about architecture. It’s about feeling. It’s about passion,” he said.

“It’s about memories of your grandfather taking you to Goodison. There’s something about that which gives people goosebumps when they walk into a building with that kind of history.

“And so that’s what we were trying to capture and make sure that we didn’t lose, even though we were going into a bigger building. That feeling is like lightning in a bottle when it works.

“The architecture obviously has to be beautiful, and it was a big commitment of mine to make sure that it felt like it grew out of the dock, and that it wasn’t just some spaceship that landed that had nothing to do with its environment.

“But all of that comes after this notion of how do we capture the energy of Goodison.” He says it was the club’s fanbase that kept him honest on that path, although there were differences of opinion about how that could be achieved.

“I know quite a few fans wanted us to build bigger. Some just wanted us to have one more seat than Anfield to say we are the biggest ground in the city. But also creating a cauldron of noise was the priority.

“And it perhaps felt easier to do that if we had 70,000 seats in a stadium, as opposed to over 50,000. I believe we’ve proved here that more seats doesn’t necessarily equal better.

“We had to work with a very specific area of land, and it was important to me that we ensured the quality of spectator views and atmosphere over a volume of people. We have still increased capacity for Everton by over 13,000.”

The site itself also meant his design team had to think differently. Two and a half sides of the stadium are surrounded by water – whether that be the River Mersey or docks. Another third of the outside space has factory or warehouse space. This means the majority of fans will enter and leave the stadium through its east side onto Regent Road.

“It is a challenge to get people in and really load the building from one side and fit a fan park in. That’s meant thinking differently about people flow in and out of the stadium, as well as how emergency services access all areas.”

Test events have been positively received in terms of the experience inside the bowl. But the volume of visitors has exposed a weakness in the transport system, with the local Sandhills train station being overwhelmed during those test events.

Whilst the transport challenges were not within the scope of Meis’s workload on design, the owners of Merseyrail are promising to develop the station to cope with demand.

“It’s early days in terms of stadium use and what I tend to find is fans often work out different ways to get there over time. Taking the train was part of their early experiments and many may now choose to walk to the game instead on matchdays.”

When Meis’s design team started this project with Everton, it was for a completely different site and completely different owners.

“When I first got the brief, there was some thought that we might be in Walton Hall Park further up the road, and I actually had some early sketches of this idea. We knew Bramley-Moore Dock was going to be an incredibly expensive site to build on, and a significant part of the budget went to just making it a buildable site. Filling in the dock added time, and it added cost.

“But you have to give credit to the Laing O’Rourke construction team for delivering on that vision in those difficult circumstances. I remember a meeting with the late Bill Kenwright and former owner Farhad Moshiri when it became clear the building was going to cost a lot more than what they thought when they were originally talking about a new building.

“What was always powerful to me is that these are businessmen and they could have abandoned the build for a less expensive site. But there was a solid commitment from the club to do what’s right for the city and build it on the riverside.

“They always realised that this is more important than just a new stadium for the club. It was a chance to kick start a wider renovation of this part of Liverpool. It cost a lot of money to make that decision, but in the end, I think we’ll all benefit from it.”

And what advice would he give to any other club planning a new stadium? “It’s very simple. I would say don’t forget that your fans really are the club.

“You may think you own this club. But I promise you there are 100,000 people that think they own the club. And it really is powerful to have a positive relationship with them.

“You really need to listen and be careful about bringing your fans along on that journey, because, ultimately, they’re the ones that are going to make that new space a success.”

Images: Aecom