Hobart Stadium: $750 million cost

[Roogal]

Burnie is the North West, not the North, so there’s a pretty big difference there. As someone who is originally from Launceston (which is two hours drive from Hobart), I’m fully supportive of the club being based in Hobart. It just has to be. When I lived in Launceston, my friends and I would regularly travel to Hobart for footy games, cricket, concerts etc.

People from the NW are the most disadvantaged by this, but the reality is that they’re only the state’s 3rd biggest region in terms of population (after the South - Hobart, and the North - Launceston), but also the most decentralised. There’ll be 4 games per season played in Launceston anyway if they can’t be bothered driving to Hobart. For NW coasters, depending on where they live, it’s anywhere between 1hr and 2.5 hours to get to Launnie. Therefore, their willingness to do the drive to Launnie is probably not too dissimilar to Launnie people’s attitudes toward driving to Hobart.

Time will tell. We all want the concept to succeed. I'm only discussing concerns that individuals raised with me. It's not a full sample of attitudes. That said, it will be interesting over time to see if the stadium can break even in terms of generating economic activity, i.e. construction and long term running and maintenance costs vs its annual usage and revenue. Perhaps a percentage of the Tasmanian franchise membership cost will be a contribution to maintenance. It's too early to say if it will be viable. Perhaps a small percentage of the construction cost may be offset by demolition of Blundstone Arena and selling off that land. Being seaside it would fetch a very lucrative price. We're all hoping that the Tasmanian government and various associated business interests linked to the new Tassie franchise have done thoroughly done their business case on this. A $730 mil project to Tasmania is relatively the equivalent of a $9 bill project in Victoria.

But as a Victorian, I am right to be sceptical of government business cases. At least it's not being done in Victoria otherwise we would be assured of an I'll thought out plan and ridiculous cost overruns.

 

[Billy ray]

is the 7 and 4 split definitely happening?

i know we (currently) have a 9 and 2 split (Gold Coast and Darwin) and as a member it sucks i only get 9 games i can go to 'live' - and i cant just drive to Darwin and its not cheap to fly (which i guess is one thing Tas has in its favour as a 2 hour drive or thereabouts would be doable for footy lovers

 

[Cunnington Cartel]

Time will tell. We all would like for the concept to succeed. I'm only discussing concerns that individuals raised with me. It's not a full sample of attitudes. That said, it will be interesting over time to see if the stadium can break even in terms of generating economic activity, i.e. construction and long term running and maintenance costs vs its annual usage and revenue. Perhaps a percentage of the Tasmanian franchise membership cost will be a contribution to maintenance. It's too early to say if it will be viable. Perhaps a small percentage of the construction cost may be offset by demolition of Blundstone Arena and selling off that land. Being seaside it would fetch a very lucrative price. We're all hoping that the Tasmanian government and various associated business interests linked to the new Tassie franchise have done thoroughly done their business case on this. A $730 mil project to Tasmania is relatively the equivalent of a $9 bill project in Victoria.

But as a Victorian, I am right to be sceptical of government business cases. At least it's not being done in Victoria otherwise we would be assured of an I'll thought out plan and ridiculous cost overruns.

True that. My point was though that I’m not surprised it was a commonly-held view in Burnie because they are facing some of the longest travel times to drive to and from Hobart. Launnie to Hobart is certainly more manageable for a day trip, so (generally speaking) the opposition from people in Launceston wouldn’t be quite as fierce.

I agree that selling off the land around Blundstone would be a good idea to offset some of the Mac Point stadium costs, although that’s where Cricket Tas is based and they need a venue that they can utilise year round, so it won’t disappear completely. Perhaps a solution could be to give it the Waverley Park treatment by demolishing some of the stands and selling off some land whilst retaining the key infrastructure that Cricket Tas requires for its administration and various state cricket teams.

 

[Cunnington Cartel]

is the 7 and 4 split definitely happening?

i know we (currently) have a 9 and 2 split (Gold Coast and Darwin) and as a member it sucks i only get 9 games i can go to 'live' - and i cant just drive to Darwin and its not cheap to fly (which i guess is one thing Tas has in its favour as a 2 hour drive or thereabouts would be doable for footy lovers

Yeah it was part of the business case. The state government and AFL all along have said that home games will be split between both venues and that Launceston won’t host fewer games than it currently does. There are $130m worth of upgrades for UTAS stadium that will be commencing soon, so it will be a vastly improved ground before Tassie enters in 2028. Upgrades will also take place at Dial Park in Penguin so VFL, AFLW and AFL preseason games can be played on the North West Coast and ensure that Tassie’s 3 main regions are provided with content. This is crucial to ensure that the whole state gets on board to support the club.

 

[Mr Taswegian]

True that. My point was though that I’m not surprised it was a commonly-held view in Burnie because they are facing some of the longest travel times to drive to and from Hobart. Launnie to Hobart is certainly more manageable for a day trip, so (generally speaking) the opposition from people in Launceston wouldn’t be quite as fierce.

I agree that selling off the land around Blundstone would be a good idea to offset some of the Mac Point stadium costs, although that’s where Cricket Tas is based and they need a venue that they can utilise year round, so it won’t disappear completely. Perhaps a solution could be to give it the Waverley Park treatment by demolishing some of the stands and selling off some land whilst retaining the key infrastructure that Cricket Tas requires for its administration and various state cricket teams.

Most likely will be staying a domestic cricket and test cricket ground.

 

[jj15]

Most likely will be staying a domestic cricket and test cricket ground.

And Clarence Football Club who has played there longer than cricket TAS. As for test cricket yer every 5 years.

 

[Section 5]

Liberals give big Hobart stadium idea from ex-Labor premier the boot

A private consortium involving former premier Paul Lennon releases an alternative vision to the Rockliff government's stadium proposal at Macquarie Point — with the government ruling it out quickly, saying it goes against the deal with the AFL.

www.abc.net.au

The plans from Mr Lennon and Tasmanian engineer Dean Coleman — under the name Stadia Precinct Consortia — show the facility would extend 250 metres into the Derwent, built on an additional 800,000 cubic metres of reclaimed land.

It would sit alongside the regatta grounds — a similar location to the initial proposal from former premier Peter Gutwein.

This was changed to Macquarie Point following a visit to Hobart by AFL executives.

Mr Lennon and Mr Coleman's plans include 450 apartments attached to the stadium, 5,000 underground parking spaces, a private hospital, hotel and convention centre.

Mr Coleman estimated the stadium would cost $750 million, with the total development to cost $2.3 billion.

He said a public-private partnership model would be used.

"Those commercial developments actually inject the funds to pay for the peripherals of the stadium," Mr Coleman said.

 

[Tandy]

Whatever gets them a stadium. Looks fairly uninspiring and 50 yrs old. The AFL probably already had things in place to get kick backs and take care of the boys club. The new precinct will want to include them in the deal for the AFL to agree. The no voters will probably go for this simply because it's not the other stadium. Lol Tasmania

 

[Bjo187]

There was a good interview on 1116 sen this morning with the guy that did those plans, he made some very good points. The AFL should say we agree to it if we can own the hotel at the site after the first 10 years.

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[Mr Taswegian]

I'm just interested to know if people believe concerts will come to a roofed stadium in Hobart if it's built for the tassie AFL team?

 

[Fizzler]

I’m skeptical that it would get many. As someone who’s into my music I like to keep an eye on international artists who come to Australia and I just don’t think many would come to Australia and do stadium shows, save for your Ed Sheerans and Taylor Swifts who are massive international megastars.
A lot of big artists will tend to do a couple shows at arenas in the 15-20k capacity mark like Rod Laver or Qudos Bank, and even then that’s generally in the cities with bigger populations. Most Australian tours include Melbourne and Sydney, maybe Brisbane if they feel like it and if they want to do NZ they’ll do one city there.
The only international artists I see doing shows over the whole country are either ones who are doing sideshows while they’re here for a festival, and ones who do small venues like either pubs or concert halls, not stadiums. In any case, they just rarely go to Tasmania and I don’t think Mac Point alone will bring concerts to Tassie.

 

[Mr Taswegian]

I’m skeptical that it would get many. As someone who’s into my music I like to keep an eye on international artists who come to Australia and I just don’t think many would come to Australia and do stadium shows, save for your Ed Sheerans and Taylor Swifts who are massive international megastars.
A lot of big artists will tend to do a couple shows at arenas in the 15-20k capacity mark like Rod Laver or Qudos Bank, and even then that’s generally in the cities with bigger populations. Most Australian tours include Melbourne and Sydney, maybe Brisbane if they feel like it and if they want to do NZ they’ll do one city there.
The only international artists I see doing shows over the whole country are either ones who are doing sideshows while they’re here for a festival, and ones who do small venues like either pubs or concert halls, not stadiums. In any case, they just rarely go to Tasmania and I don’t think Mac Point alone will bring concerts to Tassie.

So you don't believe the roof will give it an advantage?

 

[Mr Taswegian]

I'm interested to know if people believe the new Mac point stadium can be built for $715 million or if people think it will highly likely blow out to a Billion dollars or more.

 

[Howard Littlejohn]

I'm interested to know if people believe the new Mac point stadium can be built for $715 million or if people think it will highly likely blow out to a Billion dollars or more.

Nothing of this kind ever gets delivered near the budget. Anything under 50% over would be a miracle. All to make a team even less viable, as it becomes a Hobart only plaything after a couple of years with all major games at one end of the state.

 

[Howard Littlejohn]

I'm just interested to know if people believe concerts will come to a roofed stadium in Hobart if it's built for the tassie AFL team?

Artists that are skipping Perth and Adelaide won't go to a much smaller, poorer, lower ticket revenue market just because a roofed venue is available. A few more larger, but not super-large, mostly Australian bands might go with likely higher ticket sales (often the ones that play Townsville, Canberra, Newcastle etc but skip Tassie).

As for cricket, the roof needs to be very high - Docklands minimum - to play T20 or 50 over games under it without regularly becoming a problem in play. That wopuld be a very strange look to a stadium, either very few rows in multiple tiers or massive walls above a single tier.
And an oval is a shit venue for drawing any rectangular sports - few of which would have any interest in the tiny Tas market anyway.

 

[Teen Wolf]

Yeah well the roof is going to be very high, and even if that does initially look weird (it won't), we'll have plenty of time to get used to it.

Matildas just sold out Marvel Stadium again, in under 24 hours. And that's after Melbourne already had a bunch of WC games this year (and the warmup vs France in front of 50k). This time it's for a match against Uzbekistan--perfect example of an event soccer would've looked to take to a smaller market like Tasmania if it actually had a world class stadium.

 

[Roogal]

It comes down to technical complexity of the design and the suitability of the proposed site in its present state. There are at least five
stadiums that I can name that were built from scratch or have had major expansion and were completed either on or below their budgets.

• The MCG Northern Stand $15 mil under budget and ahead of time
• Mars Stadium stage 1 was on budget and stage 2 under budget
• GMHBA Stadium all five stages completed on budget
• Metricon Stadium on budget
• Townsville Stadium was completed on time and budget.

 

[Mr Taswegian]

It comes down to technical complexity of the design and the suitability of the proposed site in its present state. There are at least five
stadiums that I can name that were built from scratch or have had major expansion and were completed either on or below their budgets.

• The MCG Northern Stand $15 mil under budget and ahead of time
• Mars Stadium stage 1 was on budget and stage 2 under budget
• GMHBA Stadium all five stages completed on budget
• Metricon Stadium on budget
• Townsville Stadium was completed on time and budget.

All the anti stadium people are saying it's a $1 billion stadium minium but I still believe it can be kept on budget. The design and costings are due around Mid year so that is going to be very interesting to see.

 

[Tandy]

The longer the anti stadium Lala's hold the project up the more expensive it will be to build. As is most things with time.

 

[Roogal]

All the anti stadium people are saying it's a $1 billion stadium minimum but I still believe it can be kept on budget. The design and costings are due around Mid year so that is going to be very interesting to see.

It will be the unknown's (Such as unknown site contamination or if they have to spend a motza stabilising the site for construction) that potentially might blow out costs. Also if the design is revolutionary or too creative then that has the potential to blow out costs. If they keep the actual design of the seating tiers simple and the framework basic then it shouldn't strike too much trouble.

I recall that when they built the first stage of Mars Stadium in Ballarat six years ago, the architects said that their brief was tight. They were told to design a 5000 seat stadium for $15 million. So they went with a tried and proven cantilever frame design for the seats and roof. They future proofed maintenance by not having any fancy painted surfaces but instead opted for galvanizing all of the steel framework which will give the stands years of extremely low maintenance life. All that they did was to dress up the outer areas of the stands with some decorative geometric shapes inlayed with perspex. The builders on that project described it as having the complexity of an industrial warehouse to build in reference to the straight forwardness of the project.

I know that a heck of a lot more money has been spent developing GMHBA Stadium since 2007, but to the best of my knowledge none of the five stages had ever blown out in either time or budget. All up, about $420 million has been spent developing GMHBA Stadium.

Perhaps the biggest single risk with Hobart may be the roof which may incorporate expensive and complex design and engineering elements. Certainly when Marvel Stadium was built back in the late 90s its roof was simply a much bigger version of Rod Laver Arena which was built a decade earlier. At the time when Marvel Stadium was built it was the largest retractable stadium roof in the world at the time. Retractable roof designs for stadiums have evolved significantly since then and the roof over Hobart's stadium will no doubt incorporate much lighter weight materials and a significantly more advanced design and accordingly more expense.

 

[Cunnington Cartel]

All the anti stadium people are saying it's a $1 billion stadium minium but I still believe it can be kept on budget. The design and costings are due around Mid year so that is going to be very interesting to see.

The silver lining of the POSS process is that it will once and for all separate the fact from the fiction. Although these anti stadium people are so nonsensical that they will still be clutching onto the fear, lies and propaganda that has been spread about the stadium this year.

 

[Cunnington Cartel]

It will be the unknown's (Such as unknown site contamination or if they have to spend a motza stabilising the site for construction) that potentially might blow out costs. Also if the design is revolutionary or too creative then that has the potential to blow out costs. If they keep the actual design of the seating tiers simple and the framework basic then it shouldn't strike too much trouble.

I recall that when they built the first stage of Mars Stadium in Ballarat six years ago, the architects said that their brief was tight. They were told to design a 5000 seat stadium for $15 million. So they went with a tried and proven cantilever frame design for the seats and roof. They future proofed maintenance by not having any fancy painted surfaces but instead opted for galvanizing all of the steel framework which will give the stands years of extremely low maintenance life. All that they did was to dress up the outer areas of the stands with some decorative geometric shapes inlayed with perspex. The builders on that project described it as having the complexity of an industrial warehouse to build in reference to the straight forwardness of the project.

I know that a heck of a lot more money has been spent developing GMHBA Stadium since 2007, but to the best of my knowledge none of the five stages had ever blown out in either time or budget. All up, about $420 million has been spent developing GMHBA Stadium.

Perhaps the biggest single risk with Hobart may be the roof which may incorporate expensive and complex design and engineering elements. Certainly when Marvel Stadium was built back in the late 90s its roof was simply a much bigger version of Rod Laver Arena which was built a decade earlier. At the time when Marvel Stadium was built it was the largest retractable stadium roof in the world at the time. Retractable roof designs for stadiums have evolved significantly since then and the roof over Hobart's stadium will no doubt incorporate much lighter weight materials and a significantly more advanced design and accordingly more expense.

I haven't seen quality images like that of Mars before - they've done a good job.

A lot of the preparatory works for the Mac Point site have already been completed. The Tas Gov has been chipping away at that for a long time ever since they received $50m in federal funding about a decade ago. They are going to be relocating a wastewater treatment etc over the coming year. A decision was made some time ago to ditch the retractable roof and instead use a permanent, transparent, polymer roof (like Forsyth Barr Stadium in Dunedin). This style of roof is much cheaper so will help to keep the project closer to budget.

 

[Mr Taswegian]

I haven't seen quality images like that of Mars before - they've done a good job.

A lot of the preparatory works for the Mac Point site have already been completed. The Tas Gov has been chipping away at that for a long time ever since they received $50m in federal funding about a decade ago. They are going to be relocating a wastewater treatment etc over the coming year. A decision was made some time ago to ditch the retractable roof and instead use a permanent, transparent, polymer roof (like Forsyth Barr Stadium in Dunedin). This style of roof is much cheaper so will help to keep the project closer to budget.

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Hopefully they can still play cricket under this roof because that content is going to be very important for the stadium.

 

[Cunnington Cartel]

Hopefully they can still play cricket under this roof because that content is going to be very important for the stadium.

The height of the roof is apparently going to be the same as Marvel Stadium, can’t recall where I heard this - possibly a Nic Street interview.

It will be able to host all forms of cricket, except test matches, although there’s a chance this may change in the future if the ICC regulations get updated. BBL, ODIs and T20 internationals will add up to quite a few cricket events.

 

[Tandy]

Stadium would look better with no roof compared to the one in Dunedin.