New City Arena

[how good is he]

The Advertiser -
Steven Marshall will pledge to build a city arena for concerts and sports to replace the Adelaide Entertainment Centre.

A new arena for concerts, sport and major events will be built in the city to replace the Entertainment Centre, the Premier will announce today. Find out where.

The new arena would be built on the bank of the Torrens River, just west of Morphett St and the Convention Centre and north of the biomedical precinct.

An indoor arena for concerts, conventions, basketball and other court sports will be built between Adelaide’s railyards and the River Torrens, Premier Steven Marshall will announce today.

Unveiling a centrepiece of his re-election bid, Mr Marshall will pinpoint a site immediately west of the Morphett Street bridge and Adelaide Convention Centre.

The arena, expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, will replace the Adelaide Entertainment Centre.

It also will significantly increase the Convention Centre’s capacity, putting it in the market for larger and more lucrative events.

The axing of the Entertainment Centre, on Port Rd, Hindmarsh, opens the prospect of a major inner-city development including the adjacent West End Brewery site, slated for closure in June.

As revealed by The Advertiser in 2018, the Adelaide arena proposal has been developed by the Adelaide Venue Management Corporation, which operates the Entertainment and Convention centres.

It is understood the arena will not include a soccer pitch, which in earlier proposals had involved a pitch that elevated to become a roof for indoor events.

The arena’s precise cost and capacity are not known, although The Advertiser has been previously told it would cost $700m – offset by the Entertainment Centre’s sale – and seat 30,000 people.

Defunct proposals that included the retractable roof for the soccer pitch ballooned the cost to $1.3bn, which was steadfastly opposed by Treasurer Rob Lucas.

Mr Marshall in February last year confirmed an arena was a central part of his government’s agenda, using parliament’s opening to declare active planning for major inner-city and sporting entertainment infrastructure. It is understood the latest plans have undergone preliminary assessment by Infrastructure South Australia, an independent body established in 2018 by the Liberals to scrutinise projects.

It is not known whether the construction site would include the area’s rowing club sheds and Helen Mayo Park – development of the latter would trigger opposition from the Adelaide Park Lands Preservation Association. The parklands advocates have opposed earlier plans for a commercial helipad and 27-storey hotel in the area.

Lord Mayor Sandy Verschoor and her predecessor, Martin Haese, have both previously endorsed the precinct as a site for the multipurpose arena, saying building over the city railyards had merit and could prove to be an efficient use of space.

It also is not known if the Crows have an interest in the site. An option for the railyards revealed by The Advertiser last September involved putting the arena in a major commercial precinct, including a hotel, medical research centres, outlet shops and short-stay accommodation servicing the nearby Royal Adelaide Hospital and SAHMRI. However, it is understood that Venue Management Corporation business case, which includes a dramatic video flyover and elaborate concept drawings, is not representative of the latest proposal.

Mr Lucas’s State Budget, unveiled last November, effectively killed off the soccer option for the arena by allocating $45 million for the redevelopment of Hindmarsh Stadium, which also is operated by the Venue Management Corporation.

Ambitious vision for new sport arena at Riverbank City stadium lives on in Adelaide’s new game plan
Earlier plans for tennis to be a linchpin of the multipurpose arena also likely have been subsumed by the Budget’s $44 million allocation for a Memorial Drive upgrade, for which demolition works started on Wednesday.

The Advertiser in September, 2018 revealed plans for a multipurpose arena were being proposed for the Riverbank precinct, detailing the option to sell off the Entertainment Centre for commercial use, potentially a shopping centre.

ANALYSIS - PAUL STARICK

Premier Steven Marshall is kicking off his election campaign – exactly a year out – by offering voters a transformative development that produces a dividend from a world-leading pandemic performance.

Just as Labor propelled the state out of the global financial crisis with the wildly successful Adelaide Oval upgrade, so is Mr Marshall unveiling an inner-city arena designed to ignite the public’s imagination.

Regardless of the financial cost, this will be a landmark project for Adelaide’s CBD and, most likely, result in another for the Hindmarsh precinct, including the soon-to-be-defunct Adelaide Entertainment Centre and West End Brewery.

The $535m Adelaide Oval redevelopment had many critics but, almost inarguably, has been admired by hundreds of thousands of patrons and TV audiences around the world.

Ironically, the city railyards site was earmarked in 2008 by the-then Liberal opposition for a $1 billion multipurpose stadium, with a capacity of 60,000 and linked by walkways and footbridges to Adelaide Oval and Memorial Drive. That was superseded by Labor’s Adelaide Oval proposal, unveiled in 2009, and the Royal Adelaide Hospital.

Liberal Party federal president and Adelaide Crows chairman John Olsen has been a key player in the latest push for a Riverbank arena, telling The Advertiser in 2018 that it should be part of a discussion about the state’s future. The Entertainment Centre’s scrapping opens the prospect of a major development, perhaps including a Crows’ headquarters at the West End Brewery site – at least the club’s SANFL heritage could be recognised by retaining the tradition of emblazoning grand finalists’ colours on the brewery chimney.

Adelaide Venue Management Corporation chairman Bill Spurr has persistently pushed the proposal for some years. As a member of the Premier’s Economic Advisory Council, he recognises the benefits of a significant sports, entertainment and convention precinct in the CBD.

Like any city parklands development, this plan will unleash major and legitimate debate. Proposals should be fiercely scrutinised.

Mr Marshall will have to handle this cleverly, as Labor did with the Adelaide Oval upgrade. There are likely to be major pitfalls but, ultimately, this plan can produce a political harvest for Mr Marshall.

[Patrick_27]

I'm sorry, but this is a completely senseless proposal. Have they not learnt anything from their AFL stadium pitch from the 2010 election? Why build a second CBD arena when you already have Memorial Drive, a venue that could be entirely rebuilt to allow the amalgamation of sporting codes and live entertainment into one venue? To me this has dodgy written all over it, especially considering it honours Adelaide Venue Management Corp infrastructure expansion plans. A piddly investment for a small-scale upgrade of Memorial Drive, meanwhile Hindmarsh gets $45m for upgrades (rightfully so, mind you) and this arena is announced as an election pitch.

[NTRabbit]

Because they don't know what they're doing, and haven't had a clue what to do since winning government beyond suspiciously overpriced intersection upgrades. There's not a single minister in cabinet with any talent for governing whatsoever, completely bereft of ideas, vision, or ability.

[Algernon]

The 30,000 capacity boast is at best a white lie. Surely they are not saying that they can seat 30,000 at a basketball game - larger than any NBA venue and not even by a little bit. Probably includes people seated on the floor space for a concert. Or considering how full of it the Advertiser is, maybe it's the capacity for a convention....

Remind me why so much money was spent on incremental upgrades to Memorial Drive to bring it up from standards of a world war 2 era tennis court to the standard of a useless, expensive piece of shit?

This proposal is an election pledge? Fuck me, I should move back home and run for a seat. I'm offering chocolate kettles and submarine sunroofs.

[citywatcher]

Please lose govt before these amateurs get a chance to build more Lego models

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[kymbosa]

Wow. $700m to fund this grand idea. Labor could have a field day with this one; hospital ramping getting worse, Hove crossing should be like Oaklands, Gov doesn’t want to spend an extra $80m to do it that way, Adelaide 500 cut when it brought in $40m and the list goes on.

This government is acting like they are already in Opp. There own language of late has changed to reflect this and 1 yr out from an election they drop this idea.

In a covid world, we don’t even know when concerts to that size will return!

More hot air announcements coming from Marshall and his mate in Canberra.

Why wasn’t the Drive plan completed correctly, which would have been cheaper, better and already done. Instead they short cut that and we are now left with a tarp over a tennis court and a $700m idea!

[Bob]

Hopefully, there are enough people voting in the state to understand that this current government is a failure – it has failed on so many fronts they aren’t even worth posting each line item about anymore.

But on this particular topic as so many of us have raised in the past, there is only one logical and practical solution to providing tennis, netball and basketball a SA HQ and stadium worthy of an acceptable medium size crowd in a well-connected CBD location that can also double up for medium sized concerts and other events, that is the existing Memorial Drive site. Any new stadium must be built there. This is not rocket science.

[Waewick]

This is like reading the comments section of the advertiser.

Back on the development I wonder if there is any scope, with the sale of the entertainment area to realign the tram down to Hindmarsh Stadium ? The land will be cleared.

On the actual project more detail will be needed, but I can't see a downside of being another entertainment venue into the city.

[Nathan]

They've got rocks in their head if they think the existing Entertainment Centre site can be sold and redeveloped any time in the next two decades. Bowden has slowed and is not even halfway through the area, with two other large sites in the Coke and West End brewery sites also sitting there.

Would I love to see all these sites developed into an inner north-west medium-high density utopia? Absolutely. But it would require some significant shifts for it to remotely happen.

[citywatcher]

This is like reading the comments section of the advertiser.

Back on the development I wonder if there is any scope, with the sale of the entertainment area to realign the tram down to Hindmarsh Stadium ? The land will be cleared.

On the actual project more detail will be needed, but I can't see a downside of being another entertainment venue into the city.

That's cos you're a rusted on lib

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[how good is he]

I think the Entertainment centre site was mentioned as a possible shopping centre site. Could they even re-purpose/use the existing shell for say a Costco?! lol. I think there is existing underground parking which could stay. Not sure how feasible it would be though. Thoughts?

[Nathan]

I think the Entertainment centre site was mentioned as a possible shopping centre site. Could they even re-purpose/use the existing shell for say a Costco?! lol. I think there is existing underground parking which could stay. Not sure how feasible it would be though. Thoughts?

Oh fuck no. An inner suburb site should not be the site of a big box shopping centre, I can't think of a worse possible outcome.

[Mpol02]

The city needs people who have a vision. Our 30 year plan as clearly gone out the window.

We need a group of people who’s Abe avoid strong vision for the state. Not these guys who have no clue who are just patch working everything together in the hope it will work.

[Llessur2002]

They've got rocks in their head if they think the existing Entertainment Centre site can be sold and redeveloped any time in the next two decades. Bowden has slowed and is not even halfway through the area, with two other large sites in the Coke and West End brewery sites also sitting there.

Would I love to see all these sites developed into an inner north-west medium-high density utopia? Absolutely. But it would require some significant shifts for it to remotely happen.

That's my worry too - I love the idea of Bowden Mk2 but if that's the route they take then this will be a massive site that lays vacant for decades. It would be interesting to see what the non-residential options could be for this site. It's a prime location with easy PT access so has good potential for a range of uses that might be realised far sooner than housing. The shopping centre idea has come up before but another bog standard Welland Plaza type centre will do nothing for the area.

[claybro]

Ok so I'm confused. Everyone on here has been begging for a large multi purpose venue, and most have been demanding activation of this site adjacent to the railyards-so this apparently ticks both of those boxes. Many lament the ageing current Ent Centre as inadequate and dislocated on its site-so also solves that issue. The expenditure on Memorial Drive was a waste of money yes, but at least it provides a tennis venue until this new venue is built in about 3 years time, and will serve a different purpose anyway. Re the Bowden site and the lack of activity? That is a completely separate issue, and is more about the crap on offer in the current Bowden site, rather than the idea of the precinct itself. So why all the whining?-Just because its the libs? At least wait until the details are released and then pile on.