Just popped into CoMS for Sunderland tickets. It's a building site, still plenty to do before next Saturday. Mercer Way has been surfaced in blue with white stripes like a scarf (I thought the blue was a bit on the dark side). The car park around the store is the building site area - two roofs are being erected on the east and west side of the car park - those kind of permanent awning type dooberries like the roofing at Minicoms. Oval concrete outbuildings have also been erected at the north end of the roofs - from what I saw on the pdfs that were on Bluemoon the other day these will be toilets (bloody good idea, toilets outside the stadium). My understanding from those plans is that there'll be a bar on the east side of the shop, and a restaurant (using that term loosely, I suspect) on the west side. I'm presuming these are kiosk style with tables and seating under the awnings.
Oh, and all the concrete benches around the anchorage points for the main stadium roof have been painted blue, and the spirals have been redone with up-to-date (presumably) names in light blue on the four outermost spirals (basically white with blue print, so looks light blue from a distance) and darker blue on the ones next to the main entrances much as they were last season.
They are also marking out numbered parking spaces (with pedestrian footpaths between them) around the North end of the stadium on the apron, perhaps to replace the spaces lost to the new City Square. Lots of bollards have appeared too, which I'm sure weren't there before, which makes me think they might be going to have parking around the stadium. Not sure that last is a great idea, I think the immediate surroundings to the ground should be kept pedestrian only, but maybe I've misinterpreted what's going on and it's not for match days.
Still, looking forward to seeing the finished article. Got my season card, got my Valencia ticket sorted (cheers Ged), got my first away ticket (not doing Spurs) - can't wait to get started now - bring it on!