[+] Make or Break: Brisbane Approaches Games Precipice

It all comes down to this for the Brisbane 2032 Olympics. We can do a Bradbury. That is, unexpectedly come from the back of the pack and take our place on the top step of the podium—as the speed skating namesake of the above phrase did at the 2002 Winter Olympics. And, in doing so, pave the way for a triumphant golden era of development and growth. Or we can have another Raygun-like viral Olympics moment. There is no denying the global lampooning of Australian breakdancer Rachael Gunn’s zero-scoring performance at the Paris Olympics has been harsh, to say the least. As Prime Minister Anthony Albanese observed, b-girl Raygun “had a crack”. Even more admirably, by standing proud, owning her “creativity” and vowing to keep being herself, she has endeared herself to the masses and come out a winner in the face of all the mockery and controversy. But make no mistake, there will be no such opportunity for redemption for Brisbane if it fails to bust out some winning moves in its preparations for the 2032 Olympics. ▲ Raygun or Bradbury: The Brisbane Games preparations are at a crossroads. Already it has been a nudge over three years since the River City was given the nod by the International Olympic Committee, with the longest run-up a host city has ever had to plan and organise a Games—11 years and 2 days. “Yeah, it’s embarrassing, eight years out from being the centre of the world,” an industry source who preferred not to be identified told The Urban Developer . “We need to get our shit together. “We can’t be the joke of the world. We’re a sporting nation. People expect the best of us and we should have the best venues and facilities.” Clearly, many of Australia’s top athletes agree. In April, they put their names to an open letter to the Queensland Government urging a rethink of its venue infrastructure plans after it rejected key recommendations of an independent review panel that a new centrepiece $3.4-billion, 55,000-seat stadium at Victoria Park in the city’s inner-north was the “best outcome”. Instead, it opted for upgrades of the Queensland Sport and Athletics Centre (QSAC)—the site of the 1982 Commonwealth Games previously known as QEII Stadium—at suburban Nathan to stage the track and field events, as well as the 52,500-seat Suncorp Stadium at inner-city Milton, for the opening and closing ceremonies, and the ageing Gabba. Under the plans, the proposed $2.5-billion, 15,000-seat Brisbane Arena—which will host the swimming events—at Roma Street Parklands would be the only new venue. “We all remember the magnificent event that Sydney put on in 2000,” the letter signed by Olympians and Paralympians said. “Queensland deserves something equally spectacular, without a centrepiece that would reek of compromise.” The pressure is on to get it right and by no means a shortage of city-shaping Olympic alternatives. But with a looming state government election, a rethink or political pivot of the big vision for the Brisbane Games is not expected until after the votes are counted. Meanwhile, there are some significant other forces at play—the IOC’s mandate that the summer and winter Olympics will be climate positive from 2030, a housing crisis and prevailing challenges in the construction sector, notably a labour shortage. ▲ Penny Hall from Arup with Hutchinson Builders director Jack Hutchinson and The Urban Developer’s Adam Di Marco at Urbanity on the Gold Coast. “As a builder, it is nerve-racking just the amount that needs to get done,” Jack Hutchinson, a director of Queensland’s largest private construction firm Hutchinson Builders, says. According to the forecasts of the family-owned business, about 10,000 workers will be needed for the Games projects. “The capacity of the construction industry is going to be very tested…especially from 2027 to 2029, the industry is going to be at full capacity should everything go ahead,” Hutchinson says. “It’s going to be tough but I think we'll get there. We’re all just going to have to live with it over the next few years as a growing pain of becoming an Olympic city.” Let’s face it, there is also a lot to do because, in the scheme of things—that is, Olympic host cities—the Queensland capital is not a London, a Paris, a Tokyo, a Los Angeles or even a Sydney. And therein lies not only the challenge but the opportunity, urbanist Peter Edwards says. Brisbane Bold The founder of Brisbane-based architecture studio Archipelago is the driving force behind Brisbane Bold , the rejected Victoria Park alternative and one of the most gamechanging of the city’s Olympic visions. But he is not about to throw in the towel just yet. Far from it. Under his proposal, the former public golf course—1.5km north of the CBD—at Herston would be transformed into a 90ha sporting, events and knowledge precinct, as an Olympics “legacy corridor” with a state-of-the-art 70,000-seat stadium as its centrepiece. “There’s still an opportunity and there’s still time to create a vision for 2032 for Brisbane,” he says. “And we need to recognise that there’s differences between what Brisbane is as a city and what London, Tokyo, Paris and LA are as cities. “The difference is that Brisbane has a lot of its growing in front of it and is not as established as a global city as any of those other cities are. “But we’re doubling in size by 2040 and we deserve some significant legacy from the 2032 moment … [and] the idea that we don’t need to build anything is actually out of step with a city that’s rapidly growing. ▲ Peter Edwards and a render of Brisbane Bold, the rejected Victoria Park alternative. “I mean, how can we be a city of twice the size and still be a city of two stadiums. It’s just ridiculous.” Equally absurd and a complete waste of money, he says, is the idea of “blowing the dust off 1982 Commonwealth Games infrastructure and spending billions of dollars building temporary infrastructure just to take it all and throw it in the bin when it’s all over”. “By taking that approach, we’re not going to have any legacy. “And I think we’re missing out on one of the fundamental powers of the Olympics, which is the prestige to a city and the power to a city to actually smart itself up and deliver a set of very fine venues to host the rest of the world in. That’s the real power of the Olympic moment.” Edwards also says athletes with bags “jingling full of gold” are coming back from Paris to a city with “a paucity of facilities”. “It’s bloody embarrassing,” he says. “Take our swimmers—the best swimmers in the world come from Queensland. But look at the facilities that we ask them to train in, they’re not even on par with the facilities of most universities in the United States. It’s really kind of disappointing and I think we can do a lot better.” And that’s another reason why he believes his ambitious and innovative Victoria Park Olympics vision is what Brisbane needs. “It’s a strategy that provides a vision for the city to catapult itself forward, using the moment of 2032, and set itself up for success for the next 50 years, frankly, in terms of its DNA as a truly global city,” he says. But Edwards is not the only one with a passionate pitch out there. Northshore Vision 2050 The latest proposal to be unveiled is Northshore Vision 2050—a transformative scheme to create a $6-billion riverfront mixed-use urban renewal precinct touted to “provide the [Olympics] legacy Brisbane deserves”. It would leverage underutilised industrial land along the Brisbane River’s north shore for a staged redevelopment responding to the city’s projected growth over the next 25 years. Stage one would establish a centrepiece sports and entertainment precinct that accommodates the 2032 Olympics—including a 60,000-seat stadium with an adjacent aquatic centre and a 2500 apartment athletes’ village, alongside hotel, restaurant, wave pool and other leisure amenities. ▲ A render of the Northshore Vision 2050 proposal incorporating a Games-ready sports and entertainment stadium. Subsequent stages would integrate an additional 12,000 apartments and townhouses. The masterplan also includes enterprise, innovation and cultural zones, a high performance sports science and sports medicine, riverfront promenades and parkland, canals, an elevated landscaped walkway—like New York’s High Line—connecting the precinct to Doomben train station, and a cross-river pedestrian bridge linking the site to the suburb of Bulimba. The vision is the work of an alliance of global experts in architecture, engineering and planning from Buchan, HKS, NRA Collaborative, Aurecon and Nikken Sekkei. HKS Australia director Andrew Colling says the scheme not only addresses the challenges of the city’s existing sports infrastructure through the creation of “a unique Brisbane 2032 Olympics experience and venue to be proud of” but also delivers “a valuable social and economic legacy for south-east Queensland”. “Northshore Vision 2050’ will provide the legacy Brisbane deserves, creating sporting, community, transport, leisure, cultural and commercial infrastructure as an investment in Brisbane’s long term economic, environmental and social sustainability,” he says. Gabba Olympic Park Among the other visionary Brisbane Olympics alternatives is a brief by architect Richard Groves for an 8000-seat combined swimming and diving venue halfway up the city’s highest point, Mount Coot-tha. Groves, who has previously been involved in the creation of Brisbane’s South Bank lagoon and Dreamworld’s White Water World, says the venue’s sweeping view of the city would rival the 1992 Barcelona Olympics pool. More significantly, Brisbane-based design studio Hayes Anderson Lynch (HAL) Architects has put forward a vision for a new Gabba Olympic Park for the staging of the athletics and swimming events. ▲ A render of the HAL proposal for the Brisbane Games in 2032. “We’ve just had the Paris Olympics and Queensland is going to showcase Brisbane to the world in 2032 by sending people to QSAC—that’s a joke,” HAL Architects director Elizabeth Anderson says. “We need that iconic Brisbane backdrop—the river, its bridges, South Bank and the city. That’s why we need the Olympics at the Gabba.” The proposal by HAL Architects includes a new 55,000-seat Gabba stadium to replace the existing AFL and cricket cauldron, and a 17,000-seat aquatic and entertainment arena set above the Woolloongabba Cross River Rail station. An elevated Olympic Plaza would link the venues and a new footbridge across the Southeast Freeway would connect the precinct with South Bank, the Brisbane River and the CBD. “It's also the long-term legacy we need to be thinking about,” Anderson says. “Our proposal creates a legacy of a unique entertainment and sporting precinct, with a distinctive Queensland feel, located in the inner city above a newly built train station. “Brisbane needs a new entertainment centre and a new stadium anyway, so it makes sense to combine both into one precinct.” And pointing out the Gabba’s iconic status in Queensland’s sporting culture, she adds: “The English would never extinguish Lords, so why would we do the same to the historic Gabba?”. This is our moment Penny Hall is a Queensland-based principal with Arup, who joined the global development and design consultancy firm in the UK to work on high-profile sports projects, including the 2012 London Olympics. “You always want to be better than the last,” she said during a panel discussion at The Urban Developer ’s flagship Urbanity conference on the Gold Coast. ▲ So-fi Stadium in Los Angeles. Citing the cutting-edge SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, Hall noted: “Technology is one thing we need to be really aware of and really invest in. I don’t think we’re probably working fast enough in that space. “But it’s really about understanding 30 years beyond and working back from that … understanding what the legacy use is, investing in technology and embracing the excitement. “There’s a lot of noise and negativity at the moment around the time we’ve taken to get where we are but we’ve still got a huge amount of time and opportunity. “This is a huge catalyst or accelerator moment for us as a region and a state and for our cities and communities.” Archipelago’s Edwards agrees. “All major city-making projects are political,” he says “They just are because of the amount of money that needs to be invested in them. “But the problem is at the moment we have a very negative political environment created around the Olympics and around the investment in our city. “Stepping up to the challenge of housing affordability doesn’t mean that you can’t have an Olympics. “You absolutely have to step up to the challenge of housing affordability, and you also need to put on a smashing Olympics, take the city forward, continue to build important transport infrastructure and open up parts of the city for an expanding population. “Our moment for growing up is very much in the next eight years…we had our step into adolescence with Expo 88 and I think this is our step into adulthood with the 2032 Games. “It’s going to be a very different kind of Games for Brisbane. It won’t be a Paris Games. It won’t be a Los Angeles, Tokyo or London Games. It’ll be our Games. “There’s plenty of opportunity for us if we decide to take it. “And I think we’d be kicking ourselves in 2035 if we look back at our city and we’ve got not very much to show for having this once ever moment.” You are currently experiencing The Urban Developer Plus (TUD+), our premium membership for property professionals. Click here to learn more.

[+] Make or Break: Brisbane Approaches Games Precipice

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