Hobart hospitality heavyweights back AFL stadium plan
Building a new multipurpose stadium in Hobart would spark a new era of positive change for the city according to leading figures in the hospitality industry. Find out what they think.
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BUILDING a new multipurpose stadium in Hobart would spark a new era of positive change for the city, leading figures in the city’s hospitality industry say.
Ahead of a visit to Hobart on Friday by AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan, restaurant owner Angelo Fraraccio, hotel developer Stephen Bourke and stadium advocate Russell Hanson have thrown their support behind the stadium project.
“The Macquarie Point precinct has 90 per cent of all the hotels in Hobart within 15 minutes walking distance. The economic activity in just the building of the stadium would create around 4200 jobs and $300m over the three years,” Mr Hanson said on Wednesday.
“When it’s finished, 950 jobs and worth $85m per annum ongoing. It would be a world class venue and if the team is going to be successful, it has to have it.”
AFL boss Mr McLachlan will be in Hobart briefly on Friday for an investment leaders conference, but Premier Jeremy Rockliff hopes to use the visit as another chance to push the state’s case for entry into the national competition as the 19th licence.
“Our quest for an AFL team has been years in the making and we are closer than ever before,” Mr Rockliff said.
“We have put forward a bold offer, including investment in necessary infrastructure to set the team up for success.
“An AFL team will deliver not just benefits to young Tasmanian players across the state and AFL fans, but significant social and economic benefits. Likewise, the business case for a fit-for-purpose stadium at Macquarie Point will ensure the financial success of the team, deliver events on a scale never before possible in Tasmania, support jobs and economic growth, while unlocking transport corridors.
“We are committed to making this happen for Tasmania once and for all.”
Restaurateur Angelo Fraraccio, co-owner of Battery Point institution D’Angelo’s, said a Tasmanian team playing out of a stadium at Macquarie Point would bring huge benefits to the city.
“I reckon it will have a big impact on the restaurant and hotels in this vicinity,” he said.
“Obviously before and after a game people go out and have a drink and a meal and then they create revenue in the city. I think it’s a great idea to help small businesses around the city.”
Mr Bourke said the stadium was an opportunity not to be missed.
“Looking at the big picture, this is all about opportunity. Social opportunity, economic opportunity and architectural opportunity for Hobart,” he said.
“So I think everything encompasses a magnificent opportunity for success for both business and the city as a whole.”
‘Rockliff’s wart’: Acclaimed author slams Mac Point stadium plan
ACCLAIMED author Richard Flanagan has described plans for a stadium at Macquarie Point as “Rockliff’s wart”.
A public meeting of more than 300 people organised by the Planning Matters Alliance Tasmania packed into Town Hall on Wednesday to unanimously denounce the $750m plan.
Speaker after speaker said Hobart has higher priorities than building a stadium.
The government and Labor were both invited to send representatives, but did not attend.
Mr Flanagan, a Booker Prize-winning writer, said the plan was “the same zombie nonsense, the same confected figures, the same pathetic lies”.
“It’s a shameful con job buttressed with a set of figures so fanciful that the much vaunted PriceWaterhouseCoopers report reads like a fantasy novel missing only the dragons.
“Hobart needs homes for its homeless who camp on the Domain looking down on Macquarie Point.
“Tasmania needs fixing, the worst public health system in Australia needs fixing — not people dying in cabs and ambulances waiting to get into emergency; our 50 per cent illiteracy rate needs fixing, Hobart’s public transport needs not fixing but invention … and Tasmania needs its firefighters and teachers and nurses to be paid properly.”
Mr Flanagan said the Mercury’s support for the project was clouded by its parent company’s commercial interests in broadcasting AFL.
“The stadium is a blank cheque for a bad idea in the wrong place at the wrong time, that profits only the richest,” he said.
Indigenous woman and Macquarie Point business owner Ruth Langford said the abandonment of the strategic plan for the site has been a let down for her business and for the Aboriginal community.
Hobart City councillor John Kelly said the university move and the stadium plan had been the hot button issues of his recent campaign, with a lack of consultation in common.
“Are we replacing the sewerage silos at Macquarie Point with another monument to human waste, only bigger,” he asked.
Greens leader Cassy O’Connor said the plan has been cooked up by white men in suits.
“It’s all about money and power and greed,” she said. “But we’ve beaten them before and we will beat them again,” she said.
And independent federal MP Andrew Wilkie said he would not support federal money going to the project and he did not detect any enthusiasm from federal Labor either.
Mr Wilkie said he would do everything he could to ensure the project did not receive funding from the federal government.
Outside the meeting, former Tasmanian Football Commissioner Jim Wilkinson spoke in favour of the stadium.
“I think the Hobart stadium looks a very promising stadium. I was in Townsville two weeks ago and I looked through the Cowboys stadium,” he said.
“The stadium they built came in at a lot less than what they thought would be the case and when you look at the amount of people that go there, the actual impetus it gives to the community, the impetus that it gives to the Townsville City, I don’t know how you could really say that the stadium within the city in Hobart was going to be a bad thing.
“In fact, I’d be jumping at it if I was the Hobart City Council.”
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