#1157
Post
by stumpjumper » Wed Mar 02, 2011 4:16 am
A few points and questions:
SACA management has recently pushed through a change to the SACA constitution. It used to be that the only votes which counted in SACA votes were those cast by members in person at meetings at the oval. Now, it's possible to vote by proxy, and certain members of the committee cary very large numbers of proxies. Many ordinary members did not understand the implications of this change, and the recently expanded membership, until now.
The government's own Park Lands Act 2003 restricts leases on Park Lands to 21 years. Mr Demetriou wants a much longer lease than that for the Stadium Management Authority. I wonder what they'll do?
I've seen some figures quoted for the daily operating cost of the revamped oval, and they're frighteningly large. It's a pity that the proposal doesn't contain AO Lite - a capacity for the new oval to host rugby, hockey, soccer etc. We could then have 7s, a soccer grand final (if Adelaide ever gets up) and so on.
I'm still wondering who will be paying for the carpark? 1200 spaces at around $40K per space.
Name a government project that hasn't run over budget, and remember that SMA has burned through $10 million already and wants more money. For that money, incidentally, SMA has produced a set of drawings, and a lot of lunches have been had by guys in suits criss-crossing the nation. Who will pay for the any blowout beyond the most recent 'not one cent more' budget of $535 million?
A correction to my earlier post: SACA wants two of its leases brought into line with each other, which I think is fair enough. One lease is for the oval. another is for the strip of land to the east (not as I said to the west) over which the oval extended when the Chappell Stand was built and the old entry gate and ticket box were moved a few metres.
We already have SA Tourism Commission and Australian Major Events which is now folded into SATC as Events South Australia as well as Adelaide Convention and Tourism Authority Ltd - why did we have to set up another little empire in Adelaide Stadium Management Authority just to run the oval, especially when the AFL has already set down that the oval will belong to football 7 months of the year and to cricket for 5 months? We're only a small city, after all, and given the expensive SMA's predeliction for utter secrecy, wouldn't it be better to have it all run from one office?
The position of Tourism SA, and the government, is emphatically that the city of Adelaide is NOT a tourism destination. The tourist attractions in SA are: The Barossa Valley, Kangaroo Island and festivals - that much was drilled into me in a recent conversation with SDA boss Peter Manilauskas' office. That, and the need for shop assistants to have Christmas dinner with their families, are the reasons why we can't have extended trading hours in Adelaide. Isn't the revamped oval going to be a significant tourist draw, even given the impossibility of hosting sports other than cricket or football?
Tourism SA is closing its only public shopfront, in King William Street 'on the way' to the oval. All access to information for tourists to SA will now be via the internet. Should the Tourism SA office stay open at least until the oval is completed and running, to see if there is extra demand?
