Stadium a Risk - but for whom?

Compare the scale and impact of the proposed stadium with Members Equity Stadium
(top right) and the dominance over the adjoining residential area.

An item in this week's Sunday Times raised the spectre of the proposed multi-purpose stadium costing more than $1 billion - that's a lot of money for something that would only be fully-used for one day a week during the AFL season. More to the point, that's a lot of prime inner urban land that would be sterilised and would have to be shut off at other times (with all the community safety and security problems that entails). A dead spot in the inner city is hardly in keeping with the much-vaunted principles of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design

From the point of view of the long-standing residents of the Banks Precinct, a stadium on the East Perth power station site would mean a lot of grief whenever the stadium was in use (as well as being exposed to security problems when it wasn't in use!). The Langoulant Taskforce has not properly addressed the question of how to get up to 60,000 people to and from events at the stadium without the Banks Precinct basically becoming a parking lot. The only upside would be that the Town of Vincent could reduce the residential property rate on the back of the parking fine revenue - but that would be cold comfort to the local residents.

When representatives of the Langoulant Taskforce (eventually) came to address the Banks Precinct Group, two things stood out.

One was that, whilst they had lots of examples of new and redeveloped stadia being 'welcomed' by the local community, not one of them involved a community that had not previously had a stadium in its midst. Every example was either a redevelopment on the site of an old and tired stadium or a replacement on a nearby site, with the old site being used for new housing and other facilities. Not surprising that the community saw the replacement as an improvement.

Did someone say that sounds like Subiaco?

The second was they had apparently not considered that the absence of hospitality businesses in the immediate vicinity of the East Perth site, would mean that people would all arrive and depart in a very short window of time. Subiaco, on the other hand, has a large number of cafes, restaurants and licensed premises within easy walking distance, so at least some people come early and/or leave late - and there is a substantial economic benefit to the area. Where would that benefit be for the East Perth site?

And then there is the fairness argument. The people of the Banks Precinct chose to live there because of its high level of amenity, despite (or perhaps because of) its being somewhat cut off from surrounding areas. As inner urban residents, they accept the need for higher residential density, consistent with maintaining the amenity of the area, but a 60,000 seat stadium would be a whole new ball game (pun intended). The Town of Vincent would not be able to approve a major non-conforming use on residential land - indeed it has a policy to remove or reduce the impact of non-conforming uses. This land might not be formally zoned residential, but that was clearly EPRA's intention before the Stadium proposal came on the scene, and it is the adjacent residential area that would suffer the greatest impacts.

Stay tuned - it isn't yet time to be making plans for lying down in front of the bulldozers, but it could come to that if Langoulant has his way.