'New' Auckland Stadium Discussion

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#3357773 27-Mar-2025 11:32

mattwnz:

I recall it was going to cost over a billion back before Eden park was last chosen to get the major revamp. IMO the let revamp should have lasted decades. A new one now I am guessing will be closer to 3 billion with how expensive things add in NZ

Not Just NZ thou,

Over the Ditch QLD has just gone all in on a 60K seater for the 2032 Olympics - Cost $3.8 billion AUD - and it looks pretty mediocre....

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-25/brisbane-olympics-olympic-games-2032-stadium-premier-plans/105062348

Handsomedan

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#3357802 27-Mar-2025 12:36

I know I am late to this convo, but here's my 2c worth as a regular at Auckland's various stadia.

Nth Harbour - I live nearby and it's shamefully underutilised. It was ruined by allowing the demolition of part of one of the stadium walls to accommodate the now-failed Tuatara baseball club.
It either needs to be reinstated properly and fully used for sports, concerts and public events, or demolished and filled with high density housing.
Many Aucklanders percieve this as "too far away" and "hard to get to". It's a major barrier to it being a full-use stadium. Also - suburbs are increasing around it, apartment blocks are popping up.
Mt Smart - I go here regularly to see concerts and watch Auckland FC play. It's the perfect stadium in an imperfect location, for most things.
Concerts - it can accommodate large crowds and it's in an industrial area, which means there are less likely to be complaints about noise and crowds
Ball sports - it's rectangular, so lends itself well to football, rugby league and rugby, with the crowd nice and close and the capacity at about what is needed for most events (somewhere around 25-30k)
Eden Park - too small for cricket, wrong shape for ball sports (crowd is too far away from the pitch, shape is just all wrong), capacity too large for smaller events, as witnessed on Monday night with 25k at the All Whites WC qualifier, but the stadium seemed almost empty at times. Atmosphere is lacking, views are good from all over, decent shape and size for concerts, but the location doesn't work, due to the NIMBYs living in the surrounding suburbs. Public transport is theoretically well-placed, but is terrible and poorly managed for large events. I'd bin it rather than pouring more money into it. The Eden Park Trust is what it is...they provide gifts and entertainment to anyone that could be influenced and they are guided by self-interest/self preservation. Turn it into houses and see what the neighbours think then. They'll beg for the stadium to be ressurrected, despite being some of the worst NIMBYs in the country.
Western Springs - Great in it's heyday, but not ideal for large scale events, due to the proximity of the Zoo, surrounding neighbourhoods and it's lack of easily-accessed public transport options. It's a nightmare to access by car when busy.
Not ideal for concerts, as the noise frightens the animals at he zoo and the neighbours in the surrounding suburbs (I've been to some amazing concerts there and would love to see it continue as a speedway and concert venue, but it's not logistically feasible, IMO)
Sports would need massive changes to the layout of the stadium to be of any real use as a multi-purpose venue beyond speedway and concerts
Waikaraka Park - Speedway-specific. Keep it that way - improve it, if combining with the Speedway that's leaving Western Springs, as it's horrifically run down.
Eventfinda Stadium (Nth Shore) and Trusts Arena (Henderson) are both too small for anything other than what they offer - indoor small gigs, and the occasional outdoor and athletics gig at Henderson's Trusts Arena (outside the stadium). I'd leave them as they are and allow them to contimue as they do.
Spark Arena - we all know what that is and what it's capable of. Leave it be.
Auckland Showgrounds - would have been a perfect place for a more central multi-use stadium, but they would also face the issues of a close neighbourhood, with money. They'd object to loud events on a regular basis and it would be Eden Park 2.0 - a non-starter.

Personally, I'd go for a multi-use, configurable and scalable stadium in the Auckland Waterfront. Use private money as much as possible, but also use the money brought in from selling Eden Park, potentially North Harbour and Western Springs.
Make sure the city stadium is able to host ball sports, with stands that are close to the sidelines and make the stadium feel rectangular, but with the ability to reconfigure that for smaller-capacity oval shaped cricket and potentially AFL or other sports that use ovals and rounded fields.
Make it 50-60k capacity at it's most dense and 25k at it's least.
Ensure that outdoor concerts can be played there, but maybe have things that modern stadia have like slide-away pitches or simlar. Have a bus terminus nearby that allows for easy access - or regular shuttles from where the buses terminate to the stadium.

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GV27

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#3357813 27-Mar-2025 12:57

Handsomedan:

I know I am late to this convo, but here's my 2c worth as a regular at Auckland's various stadia.

This is a pretty frank and accurate breakdown but on a couple of these points:

No one cared about the size or shape of the ground at the CWC2015 games I went to, and it would have been a shame for them to be played on a boutique field with a fraction of the crowd size. You'd still need a decent sized stadium for marquee cricket events and I don't feel like joint-hosting the CWC again with Aus is out of the question.
Part of the awful atmosphere at Eden Park is generally due to the quality of what is on offer and when matches seem to get scheduled, as far as cricket goes. Mid-week T20 games against Pakistan or the West Indies are not going to draw the same crowd as a Saturday ODI against Australia. However NZC has to make the most of the whole summer and if the smaller regional games are better for them then there's no easy solution there. International scheduling doesn't help us either.
More people would enjoy Eden Park if the Blues won a title more than once every 20 years.
Western Springs is a shamozzle, there's been some very curious representations on behalf of stakeholders that don't seem to line up with what the stakeholders thought they were advocating for and my understanding is that the same classes of car that run at Western Springs can't run elsewhere in Auckland, effectively extinguishing those classes of racing in NZ despite them being a key part of the Aus/USA/NZ tri-series.
Waikaraka Park needs upgrading and my understanding is this is what some of the speedway groups thought they were actually supporting, not a move to ditch Western Springs altogether given the class limitations above. Takes on a different context given there seem to be plans for this to turn into an Auckland FC base stadium with a capacity of 13K and the well-heeled backers supposedly behind it.

Also the downside of Mt Smart is the lack of surrounding businesses (e.g. hospo - even Eden Park has one over it in this regard) and the train line being not that much more accessible than the Western line is for Eden Park. Becomes a moot point if the trains are not running.

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#3357814 27-Mar-2025 13:00

Handle9:

The purpose of a feasibility report is to show whether or not the proposal has considered all the relevant details. It's commenting on the proposal put forward by the development consortium. The feasibility report essentially says that the new stadium proposal is a pipe dream and not worth considering. That is entirely actionable.

The Eden Park proposal report also shows it's not financially viable and would require substantial public money on top of the ~$600 million Eden Park wants for development.

Well, I would say it's not a feasibility report unless it contains ballpark accurate information, esp around costings. Whilst most of those factors indicate costs would exceed projections, that's not a given. It feels lazy and not valueable.

Auckland has had many attempts to do this, each time costing money with no actual change. Strangely, as a tax payer, I am against just frittering away money when services are being cut to things I value like Libraries etc.

mudguard

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#3357821 27-Mar-2025 13:26

I like the way cricket had gone, away from the stadiums and to purpose built grounds. IE ten thousand people on a grass embankment, with a boutique player/members grandstand. Sorted.

I think the days of huge cricket crowds are behind us. I don't actually think it would take much to develop one in Auckland.

As for the stadium for other sports I'm at a point where I think sports themselves should fund it unless the community has a genuine use case for it.

I keep thinking if I won a big lotto I'd build a boutique cricket ground with a full sized outfield and grass bets. I'd spend my days mowing and rolling.

I played a few like that in my teens in Oz.

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#3357833 27-Mar-2025 13:55

networkn:

Handle9:

The purpose of a feasibility report is to show whether or not the proposal has considered all the relevant details. It's commenting on the proposal put forward by the development consortium. The feasibility report essentially says that the new stadium proposal is a pipe dream and not worth considering. That is entirely actionable.

The Eden Park proposal report also shows it's not financially viable and would require substantial public money on top of the ~$600 million Eden Park wants for development.

Well, I would say it's not a feasibility report unless it contains ballpark accurate information, esp around costings. Whilst most of those factors indicate costs would exceed projections, that's not a given. It feels lazy and not valueable.

Auckland has had many attempts to do this, each time costing money with no actual change. Strangely, as a tax payer, I am against just frittering away money when services are being cut to things I value like Libraries etc.

The costings are supplied by the private consortium and the Eden Park trust as part of their proposals. How is that the councils fault?

elpenguino

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#3357834 27-Mar-2025 13:58

mudguard:

As for the stadium for other sports I'm at a point where I think sports themselves should fund it unless the community has a genuine use case for it.

Even if sports do pay for a stadium in some ways, such as per event rentals, its not practical to expect sports to work together to fund it upfront. How would you get many sports organisations with disparate funding models and income streams to agree on, well, anything?

It would be like asking concert promoters to pay for a venue like Spark arena. How will anyone know how many events they'll be promoting in the future, let alone the relative portion of the cost?

Paying for things like a stadium is outside the nominal core of council obligations which is things like water supply and sewerage disposal but many ratepayers and councillors feel that having such assets makes their city more liveable.

After all, what's the point of sitting at home drinking clean water and having a poop if you have nothing exciting to do on the weekend?

So in a build it and they'll come spirit, someone like the council has to fund these things.

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mattwnz

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#3357837 27-Mar-2025 14:06

That doesn’t stop councils building things like town halls and event centres. Their role is now more than just core services. There role is also to help generate revenue for the city and this sort of thing is seen as investing in the city to provide this. However as a result their ability to actually provide core services properly has suffered.

networkn

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#3357838 27-Mar-2025 14:11

Handle9:

The costings are supplied by the private consortium and the Eden Park trust as part of their proposals. How is that the councils fault?

Who commissioned the report and who paid for it? Reasonable costings should have been part of the requirements, and they haven't been provided. It's the fault of whomever signed off the spec, or who failed to hold the providers to account for failing to deliver it.

Handle9

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#3357841 27-Mar-2025 14:17

networkn:

Handle9:

The costings are supplied by the private consortium and the Eden Park trust as part of their proposals. How is that the councils fault?

Who commissioned the report and who paid for it? Reasonable costings should have been part of the requirements, and they haven't been provided. It's the fault of whomever signed off the spec, or who failed to hold the providers to account for failing to deliver it.

So you want the rate payers to generate the costing for a third party? Do you really have any understanding of what would be required to do that? It’s a massively costly exercise that the council didn’t and shouldn’t do

How do you propose to “hold the providers to account?” You are either showing an absence of any understanding of what is involved in this or you are just bitching because you are convinced that the council is wasting money because “common sense.”

mattwnz

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#3357844 27-Mar-2025 14:18

Whoever is making a decision should refuse to do so based on inadequate information

SaltyNZ

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#3357859 27-Mar-2025 15:04

Handle9:

So you want the rate payers to generate the costing for a third party?

If a third party is to be solely responsible for it then the usefulness or otherwise of the report is their problem. If the tax/rate payers are paying for it then they have every reason to expect it will be a thorough proposal. Arguably, they also have reason to expect it would be thorough even if a third party was ostensibly going to build and run it entirely simply because there is a nearly 100% chance they'll be called upon to keep it afloat later.

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#3357987 27-Mar-2025 19:04

SaltyNZ:

Handle9:

So you want the rate payers to generate the costing for a third party?

If a third party is to be solely responsible for it then the usefulness or otherwise of the report is their problem. If the tax/rate payers are paying for it then they have every reason to expect it will be a thorough proposal. Arguably, they also have reason to expect it would be thorough even if a third party was ostensibly going to build and run it entirely simply because there is a nearly 100% chance they'll be called upon to keep it afloat later.

That is what the feasibility report does. It looks at their assumptions and checks whether they are sensible and/or seem likely to be able to be delivered. It’s a desktop based exercise that looks at how the project stacks up against other delivered projects. The reason to do this is to assess whether the project is viable to proceed to the next step in its development.

Projects like this generally follow one of the standard projects development processes. They provide an opportunity to qualify the project against its goals at various stages along the way. If a project can’t pass feasibility then it should be sent back or killed.

At that point the investment is a in the tens of thousands of dollars and pretty minor. There hasn’t been a commitment to get the project up.

I’d imagine the council is following the NZCIC process which is pretty similar to the normal international processes.

networkn

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#3358062 27-Mar-2025 22:16

So it's been decided they will do a multi-stage upgrade of Eden Park. $110M seems a considerably smaller sum than the previous suggested amounts.

I am unsure the value of Eden Park and it's associated land, but if the Government is going to throw 100+M into the pot, then I would have been asking for partial ownership, or at least dissolution of the current board and appointment of at least 2 indepedent board members.

Listening to the Chief Exec for Eden Park on the radio made me decidedly uneasy. He sounded like a born and bred politician, basically dancing around everything he was asked. He made a number of disengenious comments on the way to the actual answer to. I wish the interviewer had picked up and fed them back to him.

Handle9

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#3358069 27-Mar-2025 23:27

Eden Park and the council want it funded by the government. The government has no money allocated for it so it’s pretty unlikely anything at all will happen.

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