The Queensland government has made the surprising call to save billions of dollars on a stadium for the Olympics and hold the Opening and Closing ceremonies at Lang Park instead.
The review into the 2032 Brisbane Games’ venue plans was released on Monday morning and recommended a $3.4 billion, 55,000-seat venue be built in Brisbane’s inner north at Victoria Park.
This would have been a more expensive option than simply rebuilding the Gabba, a plan which emerged under former premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. It was set to cost $2.7 billion but would have come with its own issues given the venue’s age and location.
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Under the plan, once built the Brisbane Lions and major cricket matches would’ve moved to the Victoria Park venue, while the Gabba would’ve been demolished.
The review found “due largely to its age, the Gabba stadium is in poor condition, is operationally inefficient, inaccessible and offers very poor amenities for athletes and staff.’’
However Premier Steven Miles announced on Monday his government would instead spend $1.6 billion renovating the Queensland Sports and Athletics Centre, at Nathan in the city’s south, allowing it to hold 40,000 people in renovated stands but just 14,000 after the Games were complete.
“I was hopeful the review would find a better-value option,” Miles said.
Lang Park, currently known as Suncorp Stadium, would host the major ceremonies to begin and conclude the Olympics. The Gabba would be refurbished enabling it to host Olympic cricket.
“The Review panel recommended a brand new multi-billion dollar stadium at Victoria Park. However, as the reviewers noted, significantly more work is required to understand the opportunity and before these preliminary findings can be relied upon,” Miles’ government said in a statement.
“The Government does not believe it would be possible to deliver any new stadium at Victoria Park within the existing agreed funding, and the IOC has noted that a new stadium for the Olympic and Paralympic Games sits outside the “new norm” of using existing or already planned venues.
“The Government is therefore ruling out a stadium at Victoria Park, instead favouring investigating upgrades to QSAC and Suncorp.”
The review, conducted by former Brisbane lord mayor Graham Quirk, found renovating QSAC had “virtually nil” legacy benefits, especially because he estimated $1 billion would need to be spent on the Gabba to keep it up to standard after 2032 anyway.
The total cost of that refurbishment plus the QSAC build would thus be $800 million less than building a completely new venue which would sit as a permanent upgrade on the Gabba.
“The Gabba will reach the end of its life by 2030,” Quirk said.
“Now, even if you keep it going beyond that date with some upgrades, at some stage, the Gabba is going to need to be replaced and it is never going to be a tier-one stadium because of the limitation of space.
“As far as the QSAC site is concerned, we just don’t see, after spending around 1.5 billion dollars, any significant legacy benefit to the people of Queensland.”
He added: “I’ve heard people say we should build an 80,000- or 90,000-seat stadium, but our view was you’re starting to then get into the white elephant stage … it sits empty there the other times of the year.
“One of the great attractions of the Victoria Park site is that you not only have Cross River Rail and the Exhibition station, which is just about complete, you’ve also got Brisbane Metro stations at Herston, Kelvin Grove and Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital.
“You’ve also got significant car parking opportunity at the RNA Showgrounds, so these were things in terms of accessibility that were very important to us.
“We had the Department of Main Roads and Transport look at it to see if it could work and while it’s early days – I mean, we’ve had 60 days for this review – their findings are positive.”
The call on the 2032 Games is set to play a major role in this year’s Queensland state election where Labor is favoured to lose government.