Chairman of The Eden Park Trust, Doug McKay talks to the Herald about the exciting proposed changes to Eden Park. Video / NZ Herald
OPINION:
The Eden Park Trust has dared to dream - releasing the conservative shackles and reaching for the stars.
They have awe-inspiring plans to drag Auckland’s event capability into the 21st century by turning the bones of Eden Park into a stadium that will put Tāmaki Makaurau onthe global entertainment map.
Eden Park 2.0 is coming.
A retractable roof. A capacity of 60,000. A bigger field. Advanced transport options. A promenade. A genuine jewel in the crown of our largest and most important metropolis.
Sadly, it’s almost inevitable that the trust’s grand plan will be cut down by our culture of embracing the negative, frozen into inaction by our willingness to sacrifice potential at the altar of caution. An archaic throwback of an attitude that should have no place in a nation that needs to stand up, not cower in the shadow of our Australian neighbours.
We need a facility to scream participation and to attract major international events - sport, culture and everything in between.
Auckland is the gateway to New Zealand. It is the country’s economic powerhouse. It is poorly served by a piecemeal and embarrassing shambles of stadia, none of which rise above and provide a growing international city with the pride it deserves.
Eden Park's capacity would lift to 60,000 under the 2.0 vision. Image / Eden Park Trust
Let’s be frank here, this will be an expensive exercise. Eye-wateringly so. But it will not get cheaper. We can’t afford not to do it. Private money, government investment, council buy-in. Auckland has a head-shaking history of half-pie attempts at developing key infrastructure and a past shrouded in the regret of inaction.
Should’ve, could’ve, never did.
The underpowered Harbour Bridge, our collective refusal to embrace Sir Dove-Meyer Robinson’s rapid transport vision, the non-stadium on the waterfront.
The lack of long-term thinking, the short-term, the self-centred wants of elected officials more concerned with their immediate futures than that of the city, have not helped Auckland one iota.
Eden Park, under the exciting and expansive leadership of Nick Sautner, is trying whatever it can to drag itself away from the staid and careful past of our traditional, and failed, entertainment venue models.
It has history. It will have transport options. The footprint is already there. Fiscally and environmentally it is the only pragmatic solution.
Sell the golf courses, tax the super-rich, ignore the nimby neighbours, blow the red tape away.
Eden Park, one of the world’s iconic sports venues, has long been a turd that can’t be polished. It’s been rolled in glitter at best, but now the vision and opportunity is here to make an aspirational and inspirational step into the 21st century.
