So you want another Suncorp Stadium? Well, you can have it

The sports architecture firm that redeveloped Suncorp Stadium and Twickenham is behind the plans for Eden Park.

HOK Sports, in conjunction with New Zealand firm Jasmax, have drawn up the redevelopment plans for Eden Park and have used Brisbane's vaunted Suncorp Stadium as the basis for their redesign and approach to transport infrastructure.

Suncorp is widely regarded as the world's finest rugby ground and, even with the burden of having to create a design that caters for cricket, the designers are promising the same experience for Eden Park.

There is also a common misconception that Suncorp is an inner-city ground when in fact it is suburban, around the same distance from Brisbane's CBD as Eden Park is from Auckland's.

The Ministry of Economic Development review investigating a 60,000-seat stadium for Auckland's waterfront involves at least two people who worked on the Wellington Stadium project, and who feel the concept can be replicated in Auckland without perhaps, according to one source, "being entirely familiar with the peculiarities of the Auckland waterfront".

While the public was always likely to embrace the concept of a downtown stadium, practical issues, most notably cost, seem likely to stop the project going ahead.

New Zealand Rugby Union chairman Jock Hobbs said there had already been extensive reviews and all, most recently a PricewaterhouseCoopers study for the Rugby World Cup bid committee, pointed to Eden Park as the only realistic option.

Another industry source said the three reviews undertaken all favoured the redevelopment of Eden Park above a greenfields project.

While Bledisloe Wharf has never been specifically investigated as a potential site, most construction experts believe it would need at least $100 million of subterranean work to strengthen foundations capable of supporting a major structure.

The $350m quoted for the project seems a "ghost" figure, with most predicting the real cost would spiral.

Other factors working in favour of Eden Park are the fact time is an enemy of any greenfields project, particularly as a facility with no history of hosting major events would need to be operational for at least a year ahead of 2011.

Ironically, pedestrian access to a stadium on Auckland's waterfront could be a lot more fraught than Eden Park. Although the 100-year-old park has many faults, it has 360-degree access for pedestrians, as opposed to a stadium on a wharf which is likely to have a funnel-neck approach. With the bid document predicting more than half the 60,000 crowd would walk to the ground, it is a significant consideration.

Meanwhile, Kelvyn Eglinton, the director of sport strategy for the region, criticised the way the waterfront stadium concept was thrown into the public arena.

He is director of Auckland Regional Physical Activity and Sport Strategy (Arpass) - set up by Sparc in January to coordinate cooperation between the councils in greater Auckland for sports infrastructure.

Any review for a greenfields stadium, he said, had to involve all possible stakeholders to make sure it was sited in the right place for the right reasons - many of which would apply long after the 2011 World Cup had ended.

"Sure, the Rugby World Cup is the catalyst for it but surely you've got to get all the partners around the table," Eglinton said. "When these other options start popping up, you've got to put the people who make the decisions around the table from the start."

He said it was a "red herring" to suggest the attractiveness of the Eden Park redevelopment was seriously diminished because of residents' lobby groups.

Indeed, an Eden Park Trust Board release on Friday showed nearly two-to-one support in favour of the Eden Park project from the 470 submissions received on the proposed redevelopment.