Greg Barila: If we can’t afford to lose the Adelaide 500, then let’s build a permanent grandstand and be done with it

Today, we woke to the shock news Adelaide has been forced to forfeit its rights to host the V8 race opener due to the risks of erecting a temporary grandstand. If only we’d built a permanent grandstand years ago, writes Greg Barila.

Today, we woke to the shock news that Adelaide has been forced to forfeit its rights to host the V8 race opener due to the risks and complications of erecting a temporary grandstand in the midst of a pandemic.

South Australians have been debating the merits of a permanent facility since the Rann Labor Government first flagged the idea in 2007.

In 2016, The Advertiser’s Greg Barila suggested it might be time for Adelaide to bite the bullet, build a permanent facility and secure the future of a race the city has been proud to own for over two decades but whose future now looks dangerously uncertain.

Read Greg’s take below and vote in our poll.

In 2014, in a warts-and-all interview with The Advertiser, colourful ex-treasurer Kevin Foley told about the personal toll of his crash-or-crash-through approach to the redevelopment of Adelaide Oval.

In his mind, there was little doubt about it: “It ended my career”, he said.

“I had to be a bulldog and it upset many people. There were many times when this project could have fallen over. I rammed it through Cabinet and Parliament”.

Others will no doubt have their own ideas about just how pivotal in the project was the political determination of one K. Foley.

But here’s one thing most of us can agree on.

The $575 million redevelopment, controversial though it was at the time, has been a remarkable success and one of the best things to happen to Adelaide in decades.

It may pain some people to hear it, but Kevin Foley, along with everyone else who worked so hard to make the project a reality, was right.

After recent events, history will remember him kindly on another issue, too; the big annual car race in Victoria Park.

In 2007, the State Government’s plans for a permanent grandstand to accommodate the massive event sparked a mini-war with the city council and nearby residents who feared the structure would destroy All That Is Good and Holy and be The End of Civilisation As We Know It.

The people took a Grand Stand.

Frustrated by attempts to block the plan at every turn, the government finally found a way to swerve around the roadblock.

We would spend a motza each year to erect a temporary grandstand, basically the same as the one rejected by the parklands police. Oh, and it would take six months to put up and pull down again.

“Some cynics might say only in Adelaide could this be the resolution,” Foley said at the time.

Right again.

The temporary grandstand idea was a farce even before it was revealed this week that the company contracted to build and pack it away every year had collapsed and that organisers were racing against time to find another outfit to do the job.

I have no personal attachment to the Clipsal 500.

But if South Australians have decided it is an event they enjoy and which, for cultural and economic reasons, the state can’t afford to lose then let’s build a permanent grandstand and be done with it.

It is a move that should even appease those who fought a permanent grandstand so vigorously nearly a decade ago now, on environmental grounds.

Two years ago, the Burnside Residents Group met with the SA Motor Sport Board to discuss its concerns over impact of the temporary grandstand on the general health of the parklands, which it said were left “in a state of disrepair” after every race.

“This continual usage has left the area worn and dilapidated,” Group president Dr Anna Sullivan told the Eastern Courier Messenger.

A permanent grandstand would not simply be an investment in motorsport racing in SA but an investment in other community groups and events that could put the facility to use out of season.

In 2011, Cycling SA said a permanent grandstand would make it possible to host year-round bike races at the Park and described the current arrangement as a waste of money and “utterly ridiculous”.

“Victoria Park is for everyone and it’s time the government and the council stood up to (grandstand opponents) and allowed a stand to be left there permanently,” Executive Manager Max Stevens said.

Tom Koutsantonis should do a Foley and ram the project through cabinet and parliament and stop pandering to a whingeing minority who are hellbent on holding Adelaide back.

And if, in five years’ time, we change our minds we can just do what we did with the Southern Expressway, Rundle Mall, Victoria Sq, Torrens footbridge and Hindley St pavers — rip it up and start again.

It’s no sillier an idea than packing the Meccano set away in the toy box every year, is it?