How Brisbane Olympics can avoid Suncorp Stadium’s mistakes

But as south-east Queensland recovers from ex-tropical cyclone Alfred, the region now confronts the twin challenges of hosting the world’s biggest sporting event while ensuring any new infrastructure and facilities can cope with more frequent extreme weather events in a changing climate.

Cost-cutting on venue delivery – as happened with the $280 million renovation of Suncorp Stadium in 2003 – has saddled the community with extra cost, said architect Michael Lavery.

The major renovation by state-owned Stadiums Queensland originally planned for pedestrian walkways, like the ones moving fans to and from Melbourne’s MCG and Marvel Stadium. But even though they would have cost less than 2 per cent of the renovation budget, the bridges were cut before construction, Lavery said.

The price of traffic

The result was traffic disruptions. NRL matches at Suncorp require the shutdown of neighbouring Milton Road, south of the stadium, and Caxton Street to the north, to move the crowds.

“Neither [street] would need traffic control for events and game days if the connecting pedestrian bridges proposed with the original project had been delivered, both of which would provide a safer better-connected local environment and a better city,” Lavery said.

But the wages bill is also higher. Stadiums Queensland’s own figures show that singer Ed Sheeran’s 2018 concert at Suncorp required 70 police staff but his Marvel Stadium in Melbourne gig required just 18.

Many factors, such as police staffing ratios influence that figure, but the road shutdowns that could have been averted with construction of high-volume pedestrian walkways creates a need for more policing, Lavery said.

“We’re often having these discussions around capital cost and about the initial outlay, and that’s where the political agenda often seems to sit,” he said.

“The issue of running cost and ongoing cost and community costs is not often considered – and yet it’s the key to any good urban design decision.”

Climate resilience

A further consideration for policymakers is climate resilience. Any new stadium or arena should offer a place of refuge or accommodation in a natural disaster, as well as community hubs to co-ordinate recovery services or allow people to charge phones and withdraw cash, said Brisbane architect and urban planner Caroline Stalker.

“It does put even more onus on thinking about resilience when we think about these huge public venues,” Stalker said.

“They can help us with resilience in the face of climate change, being resilient shelters for extreme events and also being the community hub for services.”

But funding and procurement models had to change to ensure public venues, and the infrastructure connecting them to a city, was considered as critical as assets such as hospitals and schools, Stalker said.

“That question of who pays for that public infrastructure and the interface areas is an urgent question for the next phase of thinking once we’ve landed the sites for the venues,” she said.

Lavery said construction of the 320-metre Neville Bonner Bridge, connecting Brisbane’s South Bank with Star Entertainment’s troubled Queen’s Wharf casino and entertainment complex, showed large projects – even private ones – could ensure good public infrastructure.

“It’s about embedding the public benefit and embedding the legacy and urban design into the entire Olympic project,” he said.