Wednesday 6 October 2010
The first wood for the Stadium Southland rebuild is on its way! Our $140,000 new portable wooden court will soon be en-route from Singapore and installed by Christmas.
This decision was crucial for the likes of Southland Basketball – without this court the Sharks simply would not have happened. They can now be confident in their recruiting process – for them it’s Game on 2011, instead of 2012 like it is for our new Stadium Southland.
The Southland Indoor Leisure Centre Charitable Trust (SILCCT) approved a seating configuration concept at its board meeting on Tuesday night, giving the proposal the green light.
A fire engineer will visit this week to tick off the set-up but I’m confident additional seating can boost capacity to around 2700 with the return of our temporary stand, which is currently being utilised at Rugby Park.
The stand was a logistical nightmare to be fair, but we have been able to overcome that by building a special trailer to get it into the venue.
This will be a multi-functional and multi-purpose facility and we need to ensure it will meet the needs of all users in the community so it’s our intention is to make the seating and court as flexible as possible in terms of speedy set-up and removal.
So the task of transforming Stadium Southland’s ILT Velodrome into a suitable venue for elite sporting fixtures, such as Shark’s NBL matches and possibly the Southern Steel’s international ANZ Championship games, is progressing strongly.
This will breathe new life into our ILT velodrome – before it was deemed a cycling specific venue but this is really going to transform it into another international sporting arena.
The floor, which may also be used for codes like volleyball and badminton, will be installed shortly after its arrival to alleviate storage issues. We are desperately short of storage and have equipment housed at three different locations off-site which is proving challenging.
The Stadium Southland site itself enjoyed plenty of visitors this week, including Community Trust of Southland trustees and tenants of SBS House who got to see the destruction first-hand.
Tomorrow night’s public meeting regarding a proposed Centre of Excellence for Southland will cast the spotlight on the future of sport in our province. SILCCT Chairman Acton Smith and I have been invited to speak to outline the rebuild process and the Game on 2012 quest.
Tuesday’s SILCCT meeting was certainly informative with discussions around Game on 2012, overall site progress and the process of moving forward. Board member Denis Woods will chair a committee established to garner community feedback.
One of the most important tasks we have now is gathering all the ideas and information from our community users while ensuring expectations remain realistic. We must build for the future and use advanced technology for its best intended purpose in the Game on 2012 project.
A meeting has also been scheduled with tenants of SBS Sports House next Tuesday to receive their feedback, continuing the important consultation process.
Clearing of the site is now very rapid with engineers in the process of attacking court one. It’s causing a few headaches given the nature of the structure left as they attempt to retain as much of the administration building as possible.
Sport Southland’s ILT Holiday Programme has been a wonderful success this week and the organisation’s ability to adapt to a different location has been fantastic.
The OctoberFest Cycling Carnival has also produced some spectacular sporting moments and it’s great to be back on track – literally.
Nigel Skelt
Stadium Southland
Game On 2012
