McDiarmid Park
Description
McDiarmid Park is a football stadium in Perth, Scotland, the home ground of St. Johnstone F.C. Opened in 1989, it has an all-seated capacity of.HistorySt. Johnstone F.C. had played at Muirton Park since 1924, but it had fallen into disrepair by the 1980s. St. Johnstone was then a Second Division club and did not have the funds to repair it. In December 1986 the club received the news that Asda wanted to purchase Muirton Park and the adjoining ice rink to build a supermarket on the site. In return, the club would be relocated, at no cost to them, to a brand-new stadium at the western edge of the city. A local farmer, Bruce McDiarmid, donated 16 acres of land on which the stadium now stands. The going rate for the land at that time would have been approximately £400,000 but Bruce McDiarmid saw a donation of his "berry and barley fields" as a gift to the people of Perth. At the insistence of St. Johnstone he accepted a 20 per cent shareholding and the title of honorary president of the football club. The Taylor Report noted that there had been a happy "confluence of factors" that allowed St. Johnstone to make this development.The stadium was designed by Percy Johnson-Marshall and built by Miller Construction. The stadium was a prototype and based on legislative advice that was soon to become out of date, but a good facility was built for a reasonable cost. Work started on the Tulloch farmland donated by Bruce McDiarmid in December 1988 and was finished in time for the start of the 1989–90 season. Although McDiarmid Park was opened after the Hillsborough disaster, all of the planning and most of the construction work had been done beforehand. Lord Justice Taylor visited the ground as part of his inquiry into the disaster.
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