Town have been granted planning permission to add more executive boxes and office space in the Magnus Group West Stand, as well as for the memorial garden behind the Sir Alf Ramsey Stand.
The application, which was lodged with Ipswich Borough Council in April, reads: "Provision of new floor space infilling existing voids to the first and second floors of ITFC's West Stand to allow for new open plan offices and executive boxes. Together with the provision of a memorial garden access via Portman Road.”
The existing executive boxes in the stand were built during the late 1990s with the ultimate aim of filling all the way across to the North Stand end of the ground, however, this wasn’t completed.
Town announced in April that due to the installation of the new pitch, which has reached the stage where the next step is growing the natural grass, the ashes of fans interred at Portman Road will be moved to a new memorial garden behind the Sir Alf Ramsey Stand.
Following the final home game of the season, a memorial service was held for the families of those whose ashes are being moved.
Despite giving planning permission, IBC want further information before work on the memorial garden can get under way: "No development shall take place in association with the memorial garden hereby approved until details of both soft and hard landscape works have been submitted to and approved in writing by the Local Planning Authority and these works shall be carried out as approved.
"These details shall include a specification of the pigmentation of the concrete planters, and details of any minor artefacts and structures (e.g. furniture, refuse units, signs, lighting, etc). Soft landscaping works shall include a schedule of plants, noting species, plant sizes and proposed numbers/densities, and implementation and management programme.”