Three proposals, three locations for Victoria Park stadium

Another plan for a Victoria Park stadium has come to light, as the Games Independent Infrastructure and Co-ordination Authority continues its work to select a suitable location.

The Crisafulli government gave the Victoria Park stadium the green light in March, but its exact location within the 64-hectare site was still to be determined.

Brisbane firm Blight Rayner Architecture has suggested the stadium be located in the north-east corner of the park, closest to the RNA Showgrounds and the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital.

Blight Rayner’s vision for the Victoria Park stadium, at the north-west corner of the park.Credit: Blight Rayner

The Blight Rayner concept was submitted to former lord mayor Graham Quirk’s 60-day Olympic venue review and uncovered in a Right to Information request from Save Victoria Park, the community group committed to preventing the stadium’s construction within the parkland.

It was the third known vision for the site in the public realm, all of which position the stadium in different sections of Victoria Park.

Archipelago’s high-profile Brisbane Bold proposal had the stadium a little further south, near the Inner City Bypass, while an artistic render released by the Crisafulli government in its 2032 Delivery Plan positioned the stadium in the south-west corner of the park.

“I’m not sure why the government one was slightly further down into the park,” Blight Rayner director Michael Rayner told this masthead.

“It may have been a concern over the acoustics – I don’t know – but that’s yet to be tested.”

Rayner told this masthead that while his firm’s design renders were very much a placeholder, the location of Blight Rayner’s planned stadium made sense, as the terrain was relatively flat.

“I wanted to try and keep the bulk of Victoria Park intact, with the idea that the Lord Mayor’s revitalisation vision for Victoria Park could still be implemented,” he said.

“In other words, if you put the stadium too much in the middle, it could make a donut out of the park and so I was trying to keep move it to an edge such that the bulk of the park was still visible as parkland.”

There would be no need for a warm-up track in the parkland. Rather, a running track could be installed at the nearby Queensland University of Technology sports field, about 750 metres to the west.

“You don’t have a Raymond Park problem that you had at the Gabba,” Rayner said, referring to the planned warm-up track that was met with community opposition when the Gabba was the proposed Olympic stadium.

Rayner said the north-east location would also help with crowd dispersal to the Exhibition train station and nearby Brisbane Metro stations.

Blight Rayner’s vision for the Victoria Park stadium, submitted to Graham Quirk’s 60-day Brisbane 2032 Olympic venue review.Credit: Blight Rayner

“You want [dispersal] to occur, but without necessarily everyone having to trace through the length of the park to get there,” he said.

“And I did a rough topographical study, and while it’s sloping all over the park, it’s reasonably amenable in that area to put the stadium on it. It’s got less slope than other parts.”

Rayner said it could also be situated slightly west toward the golf clubhouse, which was the location former Brisbane lord mayor Graham Quirk had in mind when he recommended Victoria Park in the first Olympic venues review.

“Obviously, you’d need to consider acoustics, both to the housing on the other side of Herston Road and to the hospital in whichever location you put it and that testing still has to be done,” he said.

“But there are ways in which stadiums can contain noise, so I think it doesn’t obviate those locations.”

Rayner said the stadium design was very much a placeholder – a bespoke design befitting the stadium’s location was still to come.

“I think the parkland is the key – a stadium that really engages with the park,” he said.

“It’s not one where you’ve got a big veil around it and you’re either in the stadium or you’re in the park. You want to be in both simultaneously.

“That could lead to a very different kind of typology than anything that’s been done before.”

To that aim, Rayner said he hoped GIICA, or the state government, would hold a design competition to ensure Brisbane’s Olympic stadium became “iconic of the city”.

“It reveals a whole lot of concepts at once, so I hope they go that way,” he said.

“It can become the symbol of Brisbane in every respect – a great sporting state, etc.”

While there had been high-profile opposition to the stadium, Rayner said it could enhance the Victoria Park, rather than destroy the space.

“My rationale was simply, you’ve got 64 hectares there. If you took eight hectares out for the stadium, you’ve still got 56 hectares of parkland,” he said.

“To me, it’s not a massive loss of parkland.

“It’s not a fearmongering thing where you say stadium or park – it’s stadium and park.”

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