Link received from UpNorth
Fri, 24 Jul 2015 at 8:51 p.m.
█ Message: I see Auckland Town Planners are smart and honest enough to realise that Auckland (population 1.5 million) can’t support 3 outdoor stadiums. Dunedin (population 127k) can’t support one.
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![Eden Park 02 [rcp.co.nz]](https://dunedinstadium.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/eden-park-02-rcp-co-nz.jpg)
Plans to revamp Auckland’s stadiums are heading nowhere – with a multimillion-dollar price tag – as the Warriors rule out moving to the far end of the North Shore. Steve Deane examines how it came to this.
### NZ Herald Online 7:09 PM Friday Jul 24, 2015
The Big Read: Field of broken dreams
By Steve Deane
Aucklanders are set to spend $27 million upgrading a stadium in Albany so it can host 30,000 spectators. The stadium will host as few as seven matches a year, with attendance for the vast majority expected to be well below 10,000. That’s a good thing, as when crowds get above 20,000, accessing the stadium becomes a nightmare.
At the same time, city officials will shell out another $12 million of ratepayer money building a world class cricket venue which the local association has no plans to call home, meaning it too will host a handful of matches a year. And we’ll evict our NRL franchise, turning its home ground of the last 20 years into a speedway track – a move the Warriors say will force it to take matches out of the city.
This is Auckland’s plan for its sporting stadia for the next 40 years. In just 10 months it will become a reality. Time for some hard questions.
What is the Stadium Strategy?
Auckland’s town planners believe the city cannot financially support three major outdoor sports stadia (Eden Park, Mt Smart and Albany’s QBE Stadium).
Tasked with finding a cheaper solution, the planners have decided to transform Albany into the city’s premier venue for matches that will attract crowds of up to 30,600. Mt Smart Stadium in Penrose is to be converted into a speedway circuit and Western Springs into an international standard cricket venue.
Read more
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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr
*Image: rcp.co.nz – Eden Park 02
What if? Dunedin... 
If Auckland council are to be our mentor we have a real problem.
Their citizens are also more than $15,000 in debt EACH, as we are.
Tauranga should be our mentor, similar number of citizens, half of the council employees, no high falutin stadia, no chinese garden, no expensive upgrades, just a reasonable dose of common sense.
Auckland Council is bankrupt in inverted commas. They have hard decisions to make. They’ll make them. Dunedin CC fails to see its own demise.