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The Olympic-powered upgrade of the Brisbane Showgrounds arena will cost taxpayers $287.5 million, Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie revealed on Wednesday, as more imagery of the proposed development was released.
The heavily guarded price tag was revealed after the state government awarded Hutchinson Builders the contract to construct the Populous-designed venue at Bowen Hills.
The Brisbane Showgrounds upgrade would include a new Machinery Hill grandstand and horse pavilion, along with significant accessibility improvements.
The 20,000-seat showground arena was not expected to serve as an Olympic venue, due to its proximity to the Brisbane athletes’ village.
And it would not be utilised beyond the annual nine-day Ekka and the occasional special event, RNA chief executive Brendan Christou confirmed – at least for now.
“We’re building a multipurpose venue here, so it could potentially house AFL,” he said.
“It’s obviously not big enough for 63,000 seats [like the planned stadium at Victoria Park], but it’ll have 20,000 seats, and it could do cricket.
“That’s not what we’re building, but it is future-proof to be able to enable that flexibility … I’d like to see many events here.”
Bleijie said the upgrade would be delivered through the state-funded $3.5 billion Olympic villages program.
“The athletes’ village is three villages – the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast, and the Brisbane athletes’ village,” he said.
“They’re the three villages we’ve committed and it was always under the intergovernmental agreement the state would provide that.
“Now there is capacity, though, for the private sector to engage with us and we are in the final contractual negotiations with Lendlease for the athletes’ village in Brisbane.
“We’re in contractual negotiations with the Sunshine Coast Council and Walker Corporation for the Sunshine Coast athletes’ village and we’re in discussions with the Royal Pines Resort at the Gold Coast for the Gold Coast athletes’ village.”
Christou said he expected construction to be completed by 2028, “short of any major weather events”.
Bleijie also backed the showgrounds’ Exhibition Station to adequately move people in and out of the new Brisbane Stadium at nearby Victoria Park, rather than a dedicated station closer to the venue.
“The experts are telling us – the police experts and the [International Olympic Committee] – that [a new station] would be difficult because they don’t want 63,000 people leaving the stadium, going right out the front door to one train station,” he said.
“They want to disperse people to taxis, Ubers, buses, walking, trains to Exhibition Station.
“… It’s about dispersing the people over the biggest area you can at the same time, because then you’re not creating those congestion points, whether it’s on the roads, the buses or the trains.”
The upgrade to the oval-shaped venue – on the heels of the Lions’ boutique stadium at Springfield and the Victoria Park stadium – comes amid a campaign for a “tier-2” rectangular venue in Brisbane, to take pressure off the heavily used Suncorp Stadium.
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