North Adelaide Football Club and Prospect cricket club $17.5 million plan to make Prospect Oval ‘heart of sport’

A HUGE plan to turn Prospect Oval into the “heart of sport for the local community” includes an indoor sports centre, function centre, and new lighting.

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NORTH Adelaide Football Club and Prospect District Cricket Club have come up with a $17.5 million plan to turn Prospect Oval into the “heart of sport for the local community”.

The clubs want to build a new indoor sports centre, function centre and changerooms on the northern side of the oval.

They also want to install better lighting to host twilight matches, slightly shrink the playing field to make it the same size as Adelaide Oval and add 50 carparks.

North Adelaide Football Club chief executive Greg Edwards.

Football club chief executive Greg Edwards and cricket club president Tom Hastwell spoke about their ideas at a Prospect Council workshop last month.

“This is the jewel in the crown as far as Prospect goes – even for the north of Adelaide – and it needs to be a lot better than it is,” Mr Edwards told The City on Monday .

The draft plan – called Heart of Sport for the Local Community – was created by consultants Mott MacDonald, who also managed the Adelaide Oval development.

Prospect Council owns Prospect Oval and leases it to the cricket and football clubs, as well as the Prospect RSL.

The council came up with its own $12 million masterplan for the oval and surrounding areas in 2009 but only $4 million of work was done in 2011.

That included an overhaul of the historic northern grandstand to include a gym and SANFL match-day function space.

SANFL: North Adelaide v Norwood at Prospect Oval. Picture: Deb Curtis

The clubs would manage the latest redevelopment, and would benefit from revenue from the function centre and indoor sports centre.

Mr Edwards said the new plan capitalised on the increasing popularity of women’s sport – particularly football and cricket.

“The growth of women’s sport is like a totally new competition – a totally new sport,” he said.

“Over 10 years we’ll need to cater for more members, for more players, more games, more dinners, more awards nights, so for the tenants to be able to cope with that we need better facilities.”

Mr Hastwell said the project would help boost trade at nearby businesses.

The Adelaide Oval playing field is slightly smaller than Prospect Oval. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

The clubs would like some money from the council, but for now they are focused on getting funding pledges from the State Government and Opposition ahead of the election in March.

The council has an unfunded $14 million plan for Broadview Oval.

Mayor David O’Loughlin said that project was a higher priority for the council because of the poor condition of the Broadview tennis and football clubrooms.

However, he said the council was “happy to consider” endorsing the clubs’ Prospect Oval proposal to help them secure state funding.

“We’ve made it quite clear our capacity for funding is limited,” Mr O’Loughlin said.