Wake up, grab a coffee and take a walk on the field of your favorite soccer team.
What sounds like a dream start to the day is reality for the Arsenal fans who are among the residents of a new housing development on the site of the Premier League club's old stadium.
"The hairs stand up every time," said season-ticket holder Kate Mackle, whose apartment in the old Highbury stadium is filled with club memorabilia and furniture in the team's red and white colors. "I don't know how long it would take to get used to it."
Mackle watched her first game at Highbury in 1974 and spent season after season watching greats including Tony Adams, Liam Brady and Dennis Bergkamp on the famous field.
But four years ago, the north London ground was added to the long list of historic soccer venues abandoned in the wake of English clubs' desire to improve facilities and boost revenue with bigger crowds.
Stadiums such as Manchester City's Maine Road and Sunderland's Roker Park were razed and replaced with housing that did nothing to recognize the site's history.
But Highbury Square looks just like an old-fashioned soccer stadium: apartments are built into the Art Deco facades of the 1930s main stands and face onto a two-acre garden where the field used to be.
It's easy to imagine the not-too-distant past when Thierry Henry was scoring goal after goal in front of adoring fans.
It's the kind of vision many Detroit residents had for Tiger Stadium before demolition of the old baseball park was completed last year.
"You walk around the side of the pitch and you can hear in your head the crowd noise, and you remember," Mackle said. "Every time I walk past the east stand where my seat was, I get flashbacks to games."
Arsenal avoided the temptation to cram as many units as possible onto the site in one of north London's more desirable neighborhoods, opting to honor the stadium's 93 years of history instead of maximizing profits.
As well as hosting Arsenal through all its 13 title-winning seasons, it was the venue for Muhammad Ali's world heavyweight win over Henry Cooper in 1966.
It was the last English stadium to host Manchester United's famous Busby Babes before the team's 1958 Munich air disaster. It also was used for baseball games by American servicemen during World War I.
"The easiest option would have been to sell the land to a developer, but we wanted to retain control of what we see as a central pillar of our heritage," Arsenal marketing director Angus Kinnear said.
Government regulations protecting the facades of the stands that ran the length of the field meant they could have been moved and reassembled elsewhere.
That would have resulted in a less attractive development and alienated fans.
"If they'd been allowed to pull it down, I wouldn't have wanted to stand and watch it demolished. It would have been too much," said Mackle, who can see the street she grew up on from the fourth-floor window of her apartment in the old west stand.
It isn't immediately apparent that those white and red facades are among the only original parts of the stadium remaining.
The new floors behind the facades are at exactly the same level as the tiers on the old stands, while even the red-painted drainpipes channeling rainwater from the replica roofs are in the same place.
Although the oak beams from the boardroom have been relocated to Emirates Stadium, the famous marble hall where players would enter from the street on match days is still there and now holds the concierge desk.
The bronze bust of Herbert Chapman, the manager credited with establishing the club as a major force in the 1930s, remains in its traditional position opposite the main doors and above a floor mosaic portraying the club's cannon emblem.
Flower beds mark out where the team benches used to be and a tree grows where current coach Arsene Wenger used to stand. Residents walk down the old tunnel - where Arsenal midfielder Patrick Vieira had his famous altercation with Manchester United captain Roy Keane in 2005 - to step out onto the communal garden.
With apartments selling for as much as $1.76 million, the project does more than just add to the swagger of those fans lucky enough to join former Arsenal midfielder Robert Pires in buying or renting one of the 655 units.
"Even I'd lost track of how much prices had gone up around here," said Mackle, who lives in Paris and bought her Highbury apartment for her regular business trips to London. "It was an obvious way of the club trying to make some money."
The club's most recent financial report in September said that it had raised $275.7 million from the sale of 445 units. With just $75.2 million of a $219.1 million construction loan outstanding, Arsenal's gamble on the property market looks set to pay off despite most housing prices in Britain falling during the global recession.
With the team making more than $1.59 million extra from each home game it plays in front of sellout crowds at the 60,000-seat Emirates Stadium rather than the 38,000-capacity Highbury, the revenue from sales of the remaining apartments could go straight into player transfers.
"From a financial perspective, the development has always been ring-fenced from the main self-sustaining football business," Kinnear said. "However, now it is coming to fruition, Highbury Square will provide an incremental revenue stream that can be reinvested in our infrastructure and playing strength."
Mackle bought her two-bedroom apartment at a reduced price in January 2009 after a private company pulled out of a deal to buy 10 units.
"It's amazing to own a part of Arsenal history and great to feel that you've contributed something to the club's finances," Mackle said. "Then you realize that the 370,000 pounds that bought you the flat would just about pay three weeks' wages for a top-class player and it dawns on you how mad the game has become."
At least one agent thinks the apartments may have been harder to sell because of their link to the club.
"If anything, you're limiting your market to the fan base," said Darren Haysom, of Foxtons estate agents. "If you're a Tottenham fan, you're not likely to want to live there."
That's not necessarily true.
After returning home this season on the day Arsenal's fierce local rival was playing Manchester United, Mackle is pretty sure not all those living there support the Gunners.
"I heard an enormous cheer, so I immediately assumed United had scored. I thought, 'There's not going to be anyone celebrating a Spurs goal near this hallowed turf,"' Mackle said. "But I got in here and turned the game on, and Spurs had scored."
Still, Mackle wasn't too concerned.
"They're down in the south stand somewhere," Mackle said. "The old away end."
