Last week the club announced that Champions Place outside the London Stadium is now available to visit 24/7.
The club said: “Champions Place was previously only open on matchdays – but you are now able to view your stones at any time as the club have announced that the iconic landmark at London Stadium is now fully open to the public, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The Champions Place landmark is home to thousands of specially engraved supporters’ stones, inscribed with personalised messages at the Hammers’ new Stadium.”
Since the announcement many supporters have been asking how they can locate their Champions stones from the thousands already installed.
We queried this question to the newly created Supporter services department on behalf of ClaretandHugh readers.
We have been told: “Two installations have been undertaken at Champions Place. The first was conducted through the summer of 2016, which included all stones ordered from the commencing of the scheme up until March 14th, 2016. The second installation is now complete and includes all purchases from March 15th, 2016 to mid-April. The next installation will take place during the close season as published in our recent article, with exact dates to be confirmed. Naturally we have to liaise with all Olympic Park stakeholders in respect of access and installation and if these stones can be installed any earlier they will be. However, at the time of writing, we remain very much on schedule.”
“An email was sent in August 2016 to any supporters who purchased a stone by March 14th in advance of the first Premier League home match v AFC Bournemouth. We announced the full, 24/7, opening of Champions Place on Friday of last week with a plan to email any purchasers with details of their location soon after. This communication is being finalised with a further email to be sent to those stones installed in the latest section, The Boys of 86. Due to the recent poor weather this panel remains ungrouted, but this is being examined on a daily basis and will be completed as soon as possible.”
“At the point of the Juventus match, the Watson, Di Canio and Dick’s zones remained ungrouted but the integrity of the stones and their design were not comprised in anyway. All three panels were grouted fully by the AFC Bournemouth match as advertised and a deep clean is scheduled to take place at Champions Place this week”
“You’ll be pleased to know that all Boleyn commemorative bricks have been installed at Champions Place.”
“In terms of fulfilment and installation of remaining champions stones, planning permission dictates that we cannot install incrementally on a stone by stone basis and it must be undertaken at one full panel at a time.”