Andrew Liveris stadium call: it’s game on for 2032 Brisbane Olympics

Brisbane Olympics organising boss Andrew Liveris has dramatically backed a new stadium for the 2032 Games, revealing a multi-billion-dollar venue at inner-city Victoria Park ‘makes the most sense’.

A view of the proposed Olympic venues at Victoria Park, in the Arcadis Victoria Park Strategic Plan for the 2032 Brisbane Olympic Games. Picture: Archiepelago

Brisbane Olympics organising boss Andrew Liveris has dramatically backed a new stadium for the 2032 Games, revealing a multi-billion-dollar venue at inner-city ­Victoria Park “makes the most sense”.

In comments effectively pre-empting the 100-day review of stadium options ordered by Premier David Crisafulli, Mr Liveris told the Courier-Mail that he supported the Victoria Park option.

“I would love it, to be perfectly frank,” he was quoted as saying.

“If a stadium like that appears at Victoria Park that fits the future of cricket and football perfectly and has private sector funding that gives it a return like Optus Stadium out in Perth. Of course, Andrew Liveris would say ‘wow, what a great answer for the ­Olympics’”.

The intervention of the president of the official Organising Committee for the 2032 Games came as Swimming Australia will tie its ­vision for the Brisbane Olympics to a new Games precinct, proposing a purpose-built aquatic centre within sight of the main stadium.

Under a scheme to be presented to the 100-day review, the aquatic centre would be developed at Victoria Park and aggregate the key venues.

This would shift the centre of gravity of the Olympics to the expanse of green space on the northern lip of the CBD – lauded as Brisbane’s answer to New York City’s famed Central Park.

The parkland was put forward as the site of a 60,000-seat stadium to host the Olympic track and field events and replace the ageing Gabba as a home for the AFL and big-time cricket.

Outlining the plan, Swimming Australia chief executive Rob Woodhouse said the preferred option was for swimming, diving, water polo and artistic swimming to be staged at the aquatic centre, which would be downsized after the Games. Currently, the 2032 Olympic swimming is earmarked for a drop-in pool in the planned 17,000-seat Brisbane Arena at nearby Roma Street Gardens.

Option B would be for the showpiece competition to stay at the new auditorium, leaving the aquatic centre to proceed at Victoria Park in a trimmed-back form for the other pool-based Olympic sports, and to provide a legacy venue for them and swimming.

“You would get a bit of everything,” Mr Woodhouse said.

A view of the proposed Brisbane Stadium, top, and new National Aquatic Centre, centre, and Brisbane Arena, bottom left, at Victoria Park, in the Arcadis Victoria Park Strategic Plan for the 2032 Brisbane Olympic Games.

“The big selling point for having the swimming at the aquatic centre are the long-term health benefits for the community that would come for decades after the Games. Basically, you would format it so it could handle a similar crowd to the (Brisbane) Arena of 17,000 or 18,000 for the Games, and then bring that down afterwards to a smaller, permanent capacity of 7000 or 8000. “I can see the argument for a new indoor arena in the centre of the city, and you could still do that, hold the swimming there during the Games, and go with an aquatic centre for the other sports – though that is not our preferred option.”

Separately on Thursday, international design and engineering consultancy Arcadis unveiled a concept plan for Victoria Park incorporating a new stadium, arena and national aquatic centre to be ready for the Olympics. These would be connected by land bridges, while “habitat corridors” would offset the impact of the venues.

Brisbane’s 2032 Olympic Games boss Andrew Liveris says a new stadium should be built at Victoria Park.

On Arcadis’s numbers, the 60,000-seat stadium would cost $2.3bn, nearly a third cheaper than the price tag of up to $3.4bn projected by a review conducted earlier this year for then Labor premier Steven Miles by former Brisbane mayor Graham Quirk.

Mr Miles rejected Mr Quirk’s recommendation to proceed with the Victoria Park stadium, opting instead to redevelop the old QE2 athletics facility at Nathan which was used for the 1982 Commonwealth Games.

On taking power in October, Mr Crisafulli axed that plan and commissioned the new review under Games Independent Infrastructure and Coordination Authority boss Stephen Conry.

It remains to be seen how Mr Conry will negotiate the Liberal National Party Premier’s frequently voiced hostility to a new stadium for the Olympics.