Basketball: Auckland arena boosts NZ's chance to co-host world champs

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

Basketball New Zealand is confident it can make a compelling bid to co-host world championships with Australia now that Auckland is to gain an $80 million indoor arena.

The organisation needed to know by this month that the Quay Park project next to the old central railway station would go ahead in time for its pitch for the 2010 World Basketball Championships.

Its president, Barbara Wheadon, is delighted at the Auckland City Council's decision to approve the project in a partnership with a private consortium which will contribute $11 million against a call on ratepayers for $66.5 million.

The balance of $2.5 million will be raised from interest on invested funds once a deal is signed for construction to start next month on the 12,000-seat arena.

"It was a big call for Auckland City, but they had the courage and basketball is very pleased," Ms Wheadon said.

She said New Zealand was now ideally placed to offer to host, at a world-class venue, one of four pools for the men's championships, with six teams, including the Tall Blacks playing, 12 round-robin games over 15 days.

Council recreation and events committee chairman Scott Milne says the arena will be configured in various ways to cater for a variety of events, from church rallies and pop concerts to boxing and ice-hockey matches or even indoor motocross.

Seating capacity would vary according to the configuration, but he expected there would be room for 7000 spectators at a three-court netball tournament or 10,000 for the basketball championships.

As well as being close to the Britomart train station, it would be within easy reach of a proposed new 675-space parking building.

There would also be plenty of room for charter buses.

The arena would be of an "absolutely state of the art" design by an American firm specialising in stadium projects.

The roof would feature a metre-thick sound-barrier.

Mr Milne said the council knew of financial difficulties faced last year by a company linked to its Australian partner in the project, Jacobsen Venue Management, after two live production flops across the Tasman.

He said Jacobsen Entertainment, - which lost almost $10 million from a musical, as well a Bruce Springsteen tour - but has since pulled itself out of voluntary outside administration, was a separate entity.

But he acknowledged that the episode highlighted the cyclical nature of the entertainment industry. It was a good reason for the council to have handed operating risks for the new arena to Jacobsen Venue Management and an American partner, Jack Utsick Presents, he said.

"We don't want the ongoing risk, that is not the council's business - we would rather hand it over to experts and have them make the profits but also face any losses."

The council will receive a token cut of 20c from each ticket sale, plus royalties once profits exceed an undisclosed level, although Mr Milne said this was unlikely for the first five years or so of a 40-year operating franchise.

It will take over ownership of the arena at the end of the franchise, or sooner if the joint venture gets into financial strife in the meantime.

"We will have considerable step-in rights if they don't live up to their end of the bargain, although we have absolutely no desire to have to take these up," Mr Milne said.

Although the council was faced with a $12 million cost escalation before approving the arena last week, Richard Northey was the only councillor to vote against it, saying he feared other projects would be sidelined because of the blowout.

Councillor Victoria Carter, head of the council's former attractions committee, said she did not think there was any cheaper way of providing Auckland with such an exciting project in the absence of any central or regional government contributions.