Barlow Park lighting upgrades boost stadium’s hopes of premiership NRL fixtures
New lighting towers and a screen are expected to help attract premier events to Barlow Park but a major refurbishment worth $91m remains under a cloud.
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New lighting towers and a screen are expected to help attract premier events to Barlow Park but a major refurbishment worth $91m remains under a cloud.
Sport Minister Tim Mander visited the Cairns stadium on Tuesday to mark the completion of the $10.9m lighting and audiovisual upgrade.
While the former state government pledged $91m worth of upgrades for the rectangular stadium, Mr Mander said a 100-day review into Olympic Games infrastructure would determine if that commitment is honoured.
“There’s no commitment ever been made by our government along those lines, but we are talking to those that want to do things,” Mr Mander said.
“Once we get the review out of the way, we’ll know what the state of play is with all the venues for the games, and then we can start considering what else we need to do.”
Mr Mander said prior to the recent upgrades Cairns “would not have even been considered” for premiership NRL evening fixtures but now the city could make submissions to the code.
He said the 100-day review of Olympic Games infrastructure was due in about four weeks.
Mr Mander said while Cairns was expected to be “front and centre” of games activity, the review would decide what role each Queensland venue would play.
“But putting that aside, it’s the lead into the games as well, whether it’s training camps or preliminary events … that puts Cairns in a great position.”
The recently completed project was co-funded with a $6.9m Cairns Regional Council contribution and $4m state investment by the former government, and included the establishment of four new lighting poles with 92 LED lights.
The upgrade is expected to bring the venue to broadcast standards, with the construction of a new 13m by 7.4m video screen.
Asked if he believed Barlow Park was up to a suitable standard to host Olympic events, Mr Mander said “(it) looks pretty good to me out there”.
“We’ve now got the lights, we’ve got a good playing fields, we’ve got good spectator facilities as well. We’ll look at future upgrade potential going forward, but this is a good facility … but it’s like all facilities we can always do more.”
Cairns Mayor Amy Eden said she was confident the remainder of the upgrades pencilled in for Barlow Park would be delivered as originally promised.
She said the fact the committee had recently toured the venue was a promising sign.
“When we’re talking about parking, when we’re talking about pedestrianisation and connectivity to the central hub of the city, it makes their job a lot easier to deliver real legacy infrastructure,” Ms Eden said.
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