The 110,000-seat stadium, racing towards early completion in time for the 1999 football season, is unlike anything seen in Australia where arenas are traditionally built by sporting bodies, trusts and municipal authorities.
Sydney's is a listed business aiming to make real money from satisfying the needs of spectators - and especially big-spending business visitors - rather than simply to place the maximum number of bums on seats.
"This should be the best stadium in the world when we open for business in seven months' time," says Chris Chapman, chief executive officer of Stadium Australia Management. "The stadium was designed for the Olympics but also for effective utilisation for the next 29 years."
After the Olympics, Stadium Australia's north and south stands will be demolished and new seating built, reducing capacity to 80,000. Movable seats that can transform the pitch from a rectangular rugby field to an AFL oval in just eight hours make for maximum flexibility. To turn a profit before handing the facility to the Government, the business plan concentrates on looking after 5,000 corporate fans who will contribute 41 per cent of revenue over time. Event rentals, by contrast, account for a mere 3 per cent of revenue.
"We are developing opportunities for business and sport to occur in tandem," says Chapman. "This is not just sport that is happenning out here."
The concentration on business visitors began with the design by Brisbane's Bligh Lobb Sports Architecture, with its innovative ideas helping it win stadium design work at Melbourne's Docklands, Wembley and World Cup venue Cardiff Arms Park.
Stadium Australia's permanent east and west stands, which seat 60,000 under cover, feature 160 open-air corporate boxes and about 108 glass-fronted suites that can hold 20 to 60 for a sit-down dinner. The suites on level three of the stands are cantilevered 18 metres out towards the playing surface, placing corporate visitors less than 30 metres from the action. Such is the size of the suites that full kitchens and bathroom facilities can be installed on demand.
Food will be a cut above the pie-and-chips typically associated with sporting events, partly because food services group Gardner Merchant joined in the Stadium Australia float as a commercial investor.
Its 10-year contract to provide everything from take-aways to fine dining should deliver good-quality food without the crass commercialism of traditional sporting food outlets. In all, 5,000 members and corporate guests will be able to sit down to dinner at the same time in four "try-line" restaurants on level five and two 1,000-seat banquet rooms on level four.
"The lowest level of finish is higher than the highest point of any other stadium in Australia."
Business visitors will enter the east and west stands through columned entry portals that lead to banks of lifts and escalators lit from above by giant natural skylights. Already the first reconstituted granite cladding has been installed around lift doors and curving plaster ceiling vanes installed in retail areas to hide concrete surfaces. The banquet rooms have suspended timber ceilings and 7 m high windows with views of the CBD or Parramatta and the Olympic Village.
Reuters
