Everything old is new again, as stadium proposal shows

It is often said there is no such thing as a new idea. But they sure can get bolder.

The Brisbane Design Alliance’s slightly pie-in-the-sky proposal for a $6 billion development at Hamilton, with a 60,000-seat Olympic stadium at its centre, borrowed heavily from a 26-year-old proposal for the same site.

Back in 1998, then-premier Rob Borbidge proposed a new stadium for the industrial wasteland on the north bank of the Brisbane River.

Enter the Rivercity consortium, which pitched a 65,000-seat rectangular stadium, an 8000-seat international tennis centre, two hotels, a boat harbour and marina development, residential offerings and more than two kilometres of public walkways.

Effectively, the development on the 84-hectare site was to be Brisbane’s answer to Sydney’s Olympic precinct at Homebush.

The cost of the entire project was estimated to be a comparatively modest $900 million, back when $900 million could really buy you something.

The election of the Beattie Labor government a few months later blew full-time on the Rivercity stadium, paving the way for the hugely successful Suncorp Stadium renovation.

But this week has seen the Hamilton stadium’s return – this time an oval shape, much more ambitious and much more expensive.

In today’s terms, the 1998 proposal would have cost about $1.8 billion – still $4.2 billion shy of BDA’s ambitious vision, which is Rivercity on steroids.

The cost of building BDA’s Olympic stadium would theoretically be offset by commercial developments in the precinct, just like the abandoned Rivercity proposal.

Premier Steven Miles was right to be somewhat sceptical about the plan this week. The problems that beset the Borbidge proposal will surely beset this new vision. As was the case back then, a lack of mass transit links to the site remains a significant limitation.

But that’s not to say the door should be closed to BDA’s vision.

The proposal deserves to be properly assessed – as does the Victoria Park proposal Miles dismissed out of hand.

The Miles government’s choice of the maligned Queensland Sport and Athletics Centre as Brisbane 2032’s showcase venue was widely – and rightly – condemned when the premier made his announcement in March.

The QSAC option became even more embarrassing when renders of QSAC in Olympics mode, exclusively revealed by Brisbane Times last month, saw the light of day.

The grainy black-and-white image certainly caught the nation’s imagination – perhaps just not how the government would have hoped.

Fact is, anything would be better than Brisbane’s current Olympic stadium trajectory. Hamilton needs to be seriously explored, as does Victoria Park.

And, yes, as was the Gabba.

Brisbane 2032 deserves better than QSAC, and all serious alternatives need to be properly assessed and their merits weighed against each other.

Whether that’s through yet another venue review (as proposed by the LNP opposition) or concurrent project validation reports on each option, Queenslanders deserve the reassurance that those entrusted with delivering the Games have left no stone unturned in ensuring we deliver to the world something we can all be proud of.

If Paris 2024 showed us anything, it’s that civic pride is vital to a successful Olympic Games.

Parisians had it in spades – will Brisbanites be able to say the same in 2032?