It wasn't Carhandles illustration I was particularly having a dig at, it was the furore surrounding it and his messages, along with others within that thread and elsewhere where the profession has been called into question. This is what pissed me off. It feels like every time someone provides a reasonable response (such as Tom's), someone, with no knowledge of how a building is designed or can be constructed, knows better (this isn't aimed at you or Rocket). Then the goal posts get moved and the requests get higher.
The least planning onerous option is probably not far from what Tom has provided. However, if we had a vast sum of money, i'd say you buy those houses, re-route the services, build a new road elsewhere to retain the access and build the main stand out. The issue with the main stand is that we're trying to get it to do a number of things, provide commercial space as well as the much needed facilities that the club require. They've made no secret that there isn't sufficient space for them to operate (given the scale of activities these days). Whether they needed to be there or adjacent to the stadium is another question, however it certainly makes more sense to have it all within the same building. This then relies on the people willing to sell and the council allowing us to re-route Pittodrie street. There's then the fun with co-coordinating the re-routing with all the utility companies. Achievable, but an unknown risk and very expensive.
Building over a road isn't impossible, but there'd be security risks with allowing it to be open to the public. So i'd reckon we'd have to build another road to compensate. To either extend the stand back or build over, we'd need to buy those properties and then some i'd guess. Then there's the added issue of parking that we'd lose because of extending back, we'd likely have to dig down which will add masses amount to the build.
Rocket, I was by no means saying I was fully behind Milne. SM fucked up by not buying the land behind the South Stand, I doubt we'll ever know if it's down to motive or lack of cash. I'd like to think it was the latter.
Tom, once I'm in NZ, and if this hasn't been resolved, I'll have a go at it