December 08, 2019

Horse 2635 - The Sydney Football Stadium


This is the current state of the Sydney Football Stadium. While this might seem like a strange time to be talking about panem et circenses while the state is on fire, the root cause is absolutely identical.
The Berejiklian Government has simply failed to invest in maintenance; which means that things fall apart. Fire and Rescue NSW, the Rural Fire Service, and the National Parks and Wildlife Service have all had their budgets cut for 2019/20, which meant that basic maintenance couldn't be done, and it was announced in 2017 that the Sydney Football Stadium would be demolished and rebuilt.

Except...

When the then then Sports Minister Stuart Ayres was asked why Lendlease was named as the successful bidder when development consent had't yet been obtained to rebuild it (in December 2018), he gave a non answer.
When his replacement John Sidoti made the announcement that Lendlease wouldn't be finishing the project because they weren't able to do it within the $729m budget, it then confirmed my suspicions that Ayres' previous non answer, might actually have been the truth.

As it stands (or rather doesn't) there is no plan to build anything on the site. Given that the ferries were privatised, that the WestConnex wasn't built unless the private sector got to cash in, that Gladys wants to privatise Sydney Buses, and that the trams will be run by TransDev, what's to say that Ms Berejiklian hasn't cooked up some deal with Stockland or other some such, to sell off the now vacant land where the football stadium used to be, for apartments and a shopping mall. She's just had a shiny new tram line put in and I'm sure that developers would find that extremely attractive. Also given that former Premier Mike Baird was golden parachuted into a nice cushy job at the NAB whose motto is to "nab more than money", then I suspect that Ms Berejiklian would likewise find herself at a job with Stockland.
As it stands (or doesn't) there is probably about half a square kilometer of prime "unimproved" land where the football stadium used to be. Seeing as the Berejiklian Government is perfectly prepared to let thousands of square kilometers of bushlands, national parks, people's private properties and homes all burn to the ground, then to flog this off at some barely better than a peppercorn price, is probably worth her effort. Not only does it remove a pesky asset that costs money to maintain off the books, but the hundred million dollars or so that would be raised, would go straight into consolidated revenue where it can be then paid out to some manager as a bonus.

The big problem for any of the clubs and teams in various sport which used to play at the football stadium is that they had to pay ground rental fees. Conceivably if the land which the football stadium used to occupy is sold, then my solution to make some kind of sense out of this, would need to be put into effect almost immediately if not sooner.
My solution would be for the management of Sydney FC, NSW Rugby, the Sydney Roosters to issue shares. All three of them would need to undergo some kind of Initial Public Offer, which may or may not involve listing on the stock exchange; for the purposes of buying the land off of the NSW State Government. Clearly the government can not be trusted to hold this public asset, as evidenced by the complete knavery of the Berejiklian Government. The only rational action that I can see is if the interested sporting teams actually owned and operated the facilities that they play out of. I would also start criminal proceedings against the relevant Minister for hideous and gross incompetence and negligence.

It's really weird but sporting teams generally do not own their own grounds in Australia. I could be wrong but I think that the biggest capacity ground which is actually owned by the club that plays there is Marconi Stadium in Sydney's west. The grandstands on the eastern side of the ground which had been built in the days of the NSL, have been demolished with a simple grass hill now; which brings the capacity of the ground to a paltry 3000 at best.
Unless the teams from the big national sporting codes publicly sell shares, I see no possible avenue to buy the empty land which the football stadium used to be on; nor do I see the kind of capital raising needed to get the funding to build a replacement stadium. My mistrust of the Berejiklian Government is so deep that I can honestly see them selling the land before the 2024 election.

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