Analysis: Why axe hangs over Adelaide Crows plans for the Adelaide Aquatic Centre
The Crows will almost certainly ditch plans to relocate to the Aquatic Centre site but their ambition to move to their namesake area will endure the pandemic crisis.
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The Adelaide Crows’ $65 million plans for the Adelaide Aquatic Centre almost certainly will be abandoned but the club will retain ambition to relocate to its namesake area.
The Adelaide Crows’ $65 million plans for the Adelaide Aquatic Centre almost certainly will be abandoned but the club will retain ambition to relocate to its namesake area.
When the club is shedding staff and facing member demands for fee refunds, the attraction of saving money by staying at West Lakes will probably prove too great to resist.
The Crows can remain rent-free at the desolate former Football Park until 2038, in a $21 million training facility little more than a decade old, under a deal struck with the SANFL in return for a $11.326 million payment in 2014 to gain control of their AFL licence.
Even with $15 million pledged by the Federal Government for the North Adelaide move, the Crows now are highly unlikely to invest the considerable money and effort required to relocate their training and administration headquarters.
Like leaders across the world, chief executive officer Andrew Fagan and chairman Rob Chapman will be directing all their energies into withstanding the crisis, rather than a time-consuming approval process for costly future headquarters.
They are developing plans for member engagement in a bid to convince them to stick by the club rather than cancel automatic fee deductions.
Staff are being sent on seven-day leave while their future is assessed but the AFL has already stood down 80 per cent of its staff until May 31.
Sponsors are said to be sticking by the Crows but there will be questions over this the longer the pandemic endures.
Mr Chapman signalled the looming demise of the club’s North Adelaide plans in an interview with The Advertiser.
Asked about the relocation plans, Mr Chapman said staff, players, sponsors and members were the club’s priority in the wake of the coronavirus’s financial hit.
“If we’re cutting into the muscle of the club’s business, something like new facilities might just have to take a back burner,” he said
“Now, if that’s the case, if that’s what we decide, all will not have been lost. I think we’ve gone through a process in a professional and respectful manner. We’ve learned a lot and we’ve got a lot of information there as well in the future.”
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This means the club would retain the ambition to relocate to the Adelaide City Council area, perhaps even to the Aquatic Centre site, but it is unlikely to be even a medium-term priority.
The overwhelmingly well-meaning opponents of the Crows’s plans to upgrade the Aquatic Centre will not gloat or celebrate their abandonment.
They will, of course, view any scuttling of Aquatic Centre overhaul as a victory for parklands preservation.
But the passionate and, at times, heated debates of a month or so ago have now been replaced by a far greater imperative for everyone – survival.
Paul Starick is an Adelaide Football Club foundation member.