6 October 2010
Stadium’s velodrome court gets green light
The first wood for the Stadium Southland rebuild is on its way with confirmation today a portable court will be purchased for its ILT Velodrome.
Stadium Southland general manager Nigel Skelt said the $140,000 court would soon be en-route from Singapore and installed in its temporary home by Christmas.
“It’s exciting, especially for the likes of Southland Basketball. This decision was crucial for them – without this wooden court, the Sharks simply would not have happened,” he said.
“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 the venue this week to finalise the set-up but Skelt was confident additional seating could boost capacity to around 2700. Stadium Southland’s temporary stand, which is currently being utilised at Rugby Park, would return.
“It’s been a logistical nightmare but we have been able to overcome that by building a special trailer to get the stand into the venue,” Skelt said.
“This will be a multi-functional and multi-purpose venue and we need to ensure it will meet the needs of all users in the community so our intention is to make the seating as flexible as possible in terms of speedy set-up and removal.”
The task of transforming Stadium Southland’s ILT Velodrome into a suitable venue for elite sporting fixtures, such as the Zero Fees Southland Sharks NBL matches and possibly the Southern Steel’s international ANZ Championship games, was “nearing completion”.
“While it has been forced upon us by Mother Nature, it is an exciting opportunity nonetheless,” Skelt said.
“It’s breathing 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, is expected to be installed shortly after its arrival to alleviate storage issues.
“We are desperately short of storage … we have equipment housed at three different locations off-site which is proving challenging,” Skelt said.
Southern Steel chief executive Julie Paterson said the franchise was still assessing the viability of the velodrome option for its four home games in the trans-Tasman league.
“The Steel compete in an international competition with all games televised live so that has certainly added to the logistics we have to work through,” she said.
“We need to ensure the requirements of parties like Sky Television can be adequately met but I am confident of a positive outcome for our 1200 members later this week.”
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