Adelaide Crows consider shifting from Football Park home to new base in Adelaide’s parklands

The Adelaide Crows are considering shifting from their long-held West Lakes home to a new site closer to the city. Where are they looking to move to, what do you think about this — TAKE OUR POLL

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The Adelaide Crows are considering shifting from their long-term West Lakes home and building a new headquarters in the North Adelaide parklands, on the opposite side of the River Torrens to the Adelaide Zoo.

The 1.6ha Adelaide City Council Nursery site, at War Memorial Drv’s eastern end, is among sites earmarked and it is understood talks are continuing with the Adelaide City Council and Liberal State Government.

The site is about 1km east of Adelaide Oval, where the Crows play home games, and houses the plant nursery and council’s green waste recycling and mulch centre.

It is understood the Crows also are open to other city sites, such as the previously speculated Adelaide Aquatic Centre and a redeveloped Memorial Drive tennis complex.

The Advertiser has been told the Crows are considering a new multistorey headquarters, with associated offices, gym, indoor training facilities and clubrooms.

If the nursery site went ahead, training sessions would be conducted on ovals, now leased by Adelaide University, to the north — part of Park 10, Warnpangga, south of Bundeys Rd and MacKinnon Parade. These grounds have been used by both Adelaide AFL clubs for training, including at the 2.2km Uni Loop running track.

The Adelaide Crows are looking to move their headquarters from West Lakes to the CBD.

The Advertiser has been told the project has been predicted to generate significant benefits for economically ailing North Adelaide, particularly Melbourne St — less than 1km away.

But it is likely to intensify renewed debate about parklands development, triggered by a hotel proposed for Adelaide Oval’s existing footprint, revealed a fortnight ago by the Sunday Mail.

Adelaide City Council director of services Steve Mathewson said: “Adelaide Football Club recently approached Council administration to seek information about the potential uses of a range of locations across the CBD and park lands.”

He said the council understood this was part of a Crows’ long-term planning exercise. No formal proposal had been made and, if it was, this would be brought to elected members for consideration.

A Crows’ spokesman said the club had a long-term lease and world-class training facility at West Lakes, including a playing surface maintained to an elite standard, and had not made a formal application or approach about a new home.

“However, as we have stated many times in recent years, we consider it good and standard business practice to keep an eye on the future and gather information accordingly,” he said.

A State Government spokesman said: “The State Government has not received a formal proposal regarding the development you have referred to (nursery site).”

Adelaide players at pre-season training at Football Park last week amid demolition of the grandstands. Picture SIMON CROSS —

The Crows are likely to be influenced by redevelopments by AFL rivals West Coast and Fremantle. The Dockers last year moved training and administration facilities to the $109 million Cockburn ARC, a recreation and aquatic centre about 20km south of the club’s Optus Stadium home ground.

West Coast is building a three-storey training and administration centre at Perth Football Club’s Lathlain Park home, about 3km southeast of Optus Stadium.

Federal minister, senior SA Liberal and Crows ambassador Christopher Pyne has talked up the prospect of a $300 million multipurpose stadium next to Adelaide Oval as part of a Memorial Drive redevelopment.

A senior business source said the associated Next Gen health club could be open to repurchase under the Adelaide Park Lands Act, creating another prospect for the Crows’ headquarters.

The Adelaide Football Club has been based at Football Park, West Lakes (also known as AAMI Stadium) since it was formed in late 1990 and has continued to base training and administration headquarters there since the 2014 shift of home games to Adelaide Oval.

The club invested in a $21 million training and entertainment centre on the now-disused stadium’s eastern side, which opened in October 2009 after former premier Mike Rann in 2008 announced a $100 million stadium upgrade — that was later shelved.

Former premier Mike Rann opening the club’s new training and entertainment facility at AAMI Stadium in 2009.

In 2014, the Sunday Mail reported that the Crows had briefed the highest levels of the former Labor government before the state election in March that year, about ambitions to relocate the club’s home to a new site about 300m east of Adelaide Oval, within five to ten years.

That proposal involved a multi-storey headquarters on a site used by the Adelaide University Football Club in Park 12, not the council nursery.

Crows chairman Rob Chapman said at the time the club had a first-class training and administration centre, with access to its own stadium and grounds, with a long-term lease at West Lakes, so was more than happy and content to stay “for the foreseeable future”.

Adelaide Football Club chairman Rob Chapman

About a fortnight before this March’s state election, he told The Advertiser the club had made a decision to stay at West Lakes, because it was rent free until 2038 and the SANFL and developer maintained the oval to AFL standards.

The Crows have continued this pre-season’s training at Football Park while grandstands are demolished as part of Adelaide-based Commercial & General’s $1 billion WEST housing and retail development.

The nursery site creates the potential for community use, perhaps including as sports fields for the new Adelaide Botanic High School and partnerships with the university.

The council plant nursery, green waste recycling and mulch centre is north of Botanic Park and east of the Zoo, on the northern edge of a large bend in the Torrens bank.

Nursery operations were transferred there from 1940 to 1958 and the green waste centre opened in 1992. It recycles green waste into mulches and compost that are sold commercially for up to $81.50 per cubic metre.

The facility, enclosed by South African Kaffir apple hedge planted in the 1940s, includes an office building, sheds, glass houses and a car park.

The site’s history includes a 1912 Botanic Gardens proposal for a 2.83ha Deer Park, approved by the City Council in 1914, but subsequently dumped due to declining Garden attendances during World War I depleting finances. The area was known as the Old Botanic Garden, having been an informal site during the mid-1800s.

The Adelaide Archery Club since 1944 has been based at Park Ten’s eastern edge, near the corner of Hackney and Bundeys roads. Sandcarters Rd, built in the 1860s as an exclusive route for those extracting sand from the nearby Torrens banks, remains as a path between the archery club and nursery.