Sydney Olympic Stadium to be demolished and rebuilt

hitthepost

Norm Smith Medallist
Oct 26, 2010
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The private float of the stadium was a flop back in 1998 or 1999. Less than 1/3rd of the units to own the stadium, which also included the rights to all the Olympics events there were subscribed for by the public, so yes they looked at multiple uses after the Olympics but nothing was locked in when they designed the stadium with any deals with the AFL and CA. That happened after the Olympics.

Look at the Olympic stadiums between Melbourne and Sydney - ie Rome, Tokyo, Mexico, Munich, Montreal, Moscow, LA, Seoul, Barcelona and Atlanta. All oval stadiums in countries and cities where rectangle sports are the dominate sports. Not one of those stadiums, except for Atlanta, as I described in one of my posts above, went through major renovations, rebuilds etc after the Olympics to accommodate those rectangle sports. It obviously helped that the stadium funding came from NBC and other Olympic sponsors. They basically paid for the conversion and set it up before it was to be built to be converted and leased to the Atlanta Braves owned by Ted Turner and it wasn't a rectangle sport, it needed a bigger field than a rectangle but it didn't need an oval as big as Aussie Rules.

Neither has the stadium in Athens or Beijing. In Rio the Maracana was used for the opening and closing ceremonies and athletics stadium was the home ground for Botafogo in tha Brasilian Serie A comp and capacity was expanded temprarily from 46k to 60k. This was the first time the athletics stadium wasn't the main stadium.

It will happen again in LA in 2028 when the LA Coliseum hosts athletics like 1932 and 1984, but the ceremonies will be at the new Los Angeles Stadium at Hollywood Park which is a rectangle stadium that can host 100k for the Olympics compared to the Coliseum's 80k capacity after the latest changes.

London stadium was designed to be an 80k capacity macho set and pulled apart to have a capacity of 25k but still maintain an athletics track as the new home of British athletics.

But there was a lot of debate about its post Olympics use and they decided to reduce capacity and have these dodgy movable seats at ground level that sits on the athletics track. West Ham won the right to have it as there home ground starting with the 2016-17 season. They have moved the seats back once to allow the 2017 IAAF World Champions but the track is still there, not grass and some decent repairs had to occur when they moved the seats back before the IAAF World Champs were held.

But the majority of seats, approx 2/3rds of new 60k capacity are still an oval distance from the centre of the pitch. The original stadium cost £486 million and the renovations cost £274 million.

People in those cities have accepted watching rectangle sports in a large oval stadiums. It looks like Sydneysiders haven't and have had a good whinge about it. I think Rob got it right that the crowds are **** because it's in Sydney.

So for a stadium that the public float flopped, nobody from an economic point of view could justify spending about $300m to reconfigure it using the London Stadium as an example of having to spend approx 50% of the original cost to reconfigure it, for a more permanent rectangle when crowds in Sydney would be marginally better.
So you're actually saying nobody in the world is smart enough to design a stadium that is workable for 110k to watch athletics and then become a workable 80k rectangular stadium, that it HAD to have a low seating bowl on the wings and seats behind the goals 30m from the pitch? Hell no wonder the aliens still bypass our planet!
 
So you're actually saying nobody in the world is smart enough to design a stadium that is workable for 110k to watch athletics and then become a workable 80k rectangular stadium, that it HAD to have a low seating bowl on the wings and seats behind the goals 30m from the pitch? Hell no wonder the aliens still bypass our planet!
Not for a price so that the marginal benefits well out way the marginal costs, especially in a city with sports attendance like Sydney.
 
Nov 10, 2013
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Hell no
Only way it would be possible is to build oval shaped ground to start with and have first row of seats 5m above playing surface. Then once athletics over you fill in more rows at the front until you get to the rectangular size you want.
Wouldnt change any of the upper decks sightlines and distances. But i guess at least the ground level seats would be close?
 

hitthepost

Norm Smith Medallist
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Only way it would be possible is to build oval shaped ground to start with and have first row of seats 5m above playing surface. Then once athletics over you fill in more rows at the front until you get to the rectangular size you want.
Wouldnt change any of the upper decks sightlines and distances. But i guess at least the ground level seats would be close?
You're hired. Now just to make the time machine to take us back to 1995.
 

Ishikawa

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Jul 18, 2018
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99% of the stadium's legacy is comprised of how fit for purpose it was for the Olympic Games.
The government and planners of the time knew this.
They succeeded.

What you are missing is who pays. You are a sports fan who reckons it should happen. But it's marginal gain vs marginal cost. If it was your $300m would you invest in it?

This sub-forum is interesting and is one of the best on bigfooty. But the bolded sums up so absolutely beautifully the disconnect between many on here and pure & simple reality.
 
Givent they already re-did the north and south stands and moved them forward then just take them further.

They didn't move the north and south end forward that much.

The north and south ends were built with concrete at the lower bowl/ground tier. Those seats were concrete cemented in. Those north and south end lower bowl seats were about 3,000 at each end. There were about 12,000 seats at each end in the big steel mechano set part of stand that came down.

The last night of athletics I was up the back of the northern end, maybe 8-10 rows from the cauldron/flame and I could feel the stand shake a bit when people got into a couple of relays Oz did well in.

Living in Concord between 1998-03 I used to go for runs on my circuit to Olympic Park and watch the stadium being constructed over the last 12 months of its 24 months construction. I have a couple of booklets on the stadium, that I have in storage, but IIRC the length fence to fence north to south was 192m.

The AFL configuration was 160m long according to the AFL Record Season Guides I have, and allowing for the standard 5m-6m between fence and goal line, it means the area was reduced by 10m in length at each end. They cut a few rows of concrete seats and then changed the gradient so that they could make an extra 10m of rows of seat at each end. That didn't cost much and wasn't technically difficult.

They made a second level of seats at the back of north and south end above those in the existing concrete bowl and added the roof. The biggest expense was cutting out about 4,000 seats set in concrete in each of the west and east stands and replacing them with about 3,500 seats in each wing with movable seats that move about 15-20m on each wing. They are a cool bit of engineering. I haven't seen them moving but have been in the area before and after they have moved between AFL and RL games.
 
Wait what?

That would be par for the course with this ridiculous government.
Apparently they fired most of the people working on that part and haven't fully funded the planning stage. Nothing official but it doesn't look great.
 
Apr 12, 2012
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Time to change the title. Pretty obvious this was going to happen. Inexcusable really to do a refurnish of a 20 year old stadium. Justifying the cost was never going to happen, especially after they went ahead with Allianz Stadium

Which is a slight on the past administration ******* up the design so badly that it’s needed after only 20 years.
 
Aug 14, 2011
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Mclaren Mercedes F1
Time to change the title. Pretty obvious this was going to happen. Inexcusable really to do a refurnish of a 20 year old stadium. Justifying the cost was never going to happen, especially after they went ahead with Allianz Stadium

On again, off again ..... its premature to say its over.
 
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