Otago stadium flyover

Contain your excitement…

www.otagostadium.co.nz

D Scene behind with name calling

A slow news week at D Scene. Read What if? or ODT instead.

### D Scene 8-7-09 (page 3)
Got a complex
By Ryan Keen, Editor
Forsyth Barr Stadium at University Plaza. Mmmm. It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue does it. You’d like to think those driving the controversial $198 million project didn’t spend too much coming up with that clunky moniker. Given the brand launch for the…deep breath now…Forsyth Barr Stadium at University what’s it was held just last week, it’s time to consider other names for the venue. Let’s hope, once it’s built, that it doesn’t take too long for a popular nickname to emerge. Mind you, if you count Farry’s Folly or Awatea St Albatross then a few already have.
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Stadium battle set for another round (page 4)
By Michelle Sutton
The legal battle over Otago’s controversial stadium looks set to return to court. Queenstown resident Basil Walker says he is appealing the Dunedin High Court decision, and will lodge the appeal this week.
Otago Regional Council counsel Alistair Logan says $12,890 has been fixed as the amount the regional council can seek from Walker.
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(page 8)
A $15 million funding agreement between Dunedin City Council and the Government has been signed. The agreement includes a condition that the stadium will be available for games in September 2011 for the Rugby World Cup. The $15 million was paid to DCC on July 1.
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Your say: Dunedin on Dunedin (page 9)
The good old days: beer at council by Gavin MacDonald, Dunedin
Whistle blows by Gordon Johnston, Opoho
Clarity for Clare by Peter Attwooll, Dunedin
Sick of it by Chris Roy, Dunedin
City Heart by Brian Andrews, St Kilda

Stadium: Letters are 'no use'

Much has been made by CST and DCC pro stadium councillors of the letters of support (in principle) received from various organisations. CST made the approaches, with the result most if not all letters arrived in January.

They were published in the report to Council on February 9, 2009. Link

Make up your own minds whether they carry something substantive to the proposed stadium’s operational viability.

PricewaterhouseCoopers at page 7 of their report dated 30 January 2009 (see above link) said:

“Although the underlying assumptions for rugby related cash flows are now more conservative (a reduction in total rugby event revenue of on average $276,000 per annum), we reinforce the caveats noted in our December 2007 report and in [Horwath HTL’s] December 2008 Report that there is uncertainty about the structure of NZRU and SANZAR competitions after 2010. Consequently, there is uncertainty about the number and quality of games that will be played in Dunedin.”

We all know the proposed stadium is ascendant on the theory that three 2011 RWC pool games to be played at Dunedin make a new stadium mandatory…

[ignore the fact the games have been assigned to Carisbrook]

We find ourselves building a very expensive shed for just three games and as a sop to future rugby.

Is the ‘national game’ worth this sort of investment. Only complete fools would think so. And yet we have these sorts of people on the Dunedin City Council and the Carisbrook Stadium Trust.

They are people we cannot afford to support, and should not support for our community well-being. We have some fruitful months ahead to debate this.

The wolf is already at the stadium’s door.

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Local businessman Michael Stedman in a letter to the editor (ODT, 20.4.09) said:

“Cr Bill Acklin’s response (ODT, 8.4.09) to Mark Laughton’s article (ODT, 7.4.09) is long on rhetoric and nostalgia but, like so many before him, short on fact and detail.

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This is a fair ask.

Cr Acklin responded (abridged by ODT):

“Your correspondent can find information on proposed users of the stadium on the city council website, under ‘Council meeting of February 9, 2009, under reports, attachment 2, part 2’.
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How absolutely futile to educate Cr Acklin on the fact that Dunedin is a well established, mapped and revered New Zealand city, today and into the future.

This attractive liveable city district is made special by the people who reside here, including those who strongly work their connections regionally, nationally and internationally.

Fear, it is the Dunedin City Council who makes us small – or dying – since according to pro councillors without a “wow” “fantastic” stadium there is no future in town.

The plastic lunch box exercise – call it what you will – is nothing short of a disingenuous, relentless undermining of business ethics, transparency and public accountability.

Watch the bad apples.