My main (possibly only) beef with Anti-Stadium folk is the level of debate and the massive misinformation campaign that has been waged against Our Stadium. I have been concerned for a long time now that the fallacies of the opponents might just disseminate into public discourse as a matter of fact, I’ve been fed these misconceptions from time to time, now it seems this stuff really is settling in as fact in the public domain.
And the proof as they say is in the pudding, take for instance this comment on the ODT comments section.
“Building Dunedin a ‘multi-purpose’ stadium is the stupidest
idea in the world. It is ridiculous. The successful stadiums
in the world are all purpose built, Indianapolis, Nou-camp,
Twickenham. If it is about money, don’t build it at all, fix
Carisbrook, use the heritage drawcard and make a rugby
stadium. Have ’boutique tests’ at uni oval, (though that is
also stupid, Dunedin will benifit more from 20/20). Fix the
Regent Theatre if you want shows, it is beautiful.
Multi purpose has no soul, like burned out Olympic
villages.”
Where do you start with that, honestly. I mean it wasn’t good enough for Dr Hamlin of the university to make the stupid, fallacious and erroneous suggestion that Twickenham was a single use stadium, and it’s simply not good enough for the public to use this line of argument.
It is also quite erroneous to suggest that the only successful stadiums are single use. The infamous Rogers Centre and O2 arena are testament to that.
Yes we could do-up Carisbrook and yes we could ‘trade’ on the heritage factor of Carisbrook, but what would we have but a 30,000 open air stadium, just like all of the other open air 30K regional stadiums. Where would be the point of difference, and what would be the attraction for events to come to the bottom of the country that could just use other open aired 30K stadiums. Does Dunedin really want to compete with Harrow stadium for 3rd tier test match, because at the end of the day, a lesser option for Carisbrook will not satisfy the NZRFU, and quite frankly wouldn’t garner the interest of other sporting bodies necessary to make this a working venture.
I agree the Regent is beautiful, but if Multi-Purpose is soulless, then empty for 90% of the time single use stadiums must be by very definition a virtual graveyard. Rather a soulless but used stadium than a testament to bygone days used less than 10% of the year.
What if? Dunedin... 