Auckland 'needs venue rethink' if sport suffers after coronavirus lockdown

Tuesday, 7 April 2020

There has been much debate about whether Eden Park should be allowed to host concerts as well as sporting events.

OPINION: The only thing any of us knows for sure in this extraordinary phase in our national and civic life, is that at some point it will end. Businesses will re-open, public life will resume and our new normal will begin.

At that point, more than ever, we will need a comprehensive, long-term plan for Auckland's assets which makes this city a hyper-appealing destination for tourists and a prime urban venue for sporting, arts and cultural events.

With the formation of the Supercity, Auckland inherited a group of assets largely concentrated around the centre of the city and mostly aged and unfit for purpose.

Some of these assets have received particular attention; commentators have spoken and written a great deal about the important issue of the city's stadia, chiefly Western Springs and Mt Smart, which are managed by the RFA, and Eden Park, which is currently controlled by the Eden Park Trust Board but which may shift under the umbrella of Auckland Council if further financial assistance is needed to support its viability in the event of an extended lockdown.

**READ MORE:

A view of Mt Smart Stadium as the Warriors' home season is shut down due to the Covid-19 virus.

* Eden Park's future: What the neighbours really think

* Eden Park row: Could concerts save the home of the All Blacks?

* Auckland waterfront stadium projected cost rises to $2.4 billion**

No commentator is addressing the broader issue, however. The big question is how we use and invest in what we have to convert the performance of our assets into returns which do the utmost for Auckland's economy and society.

Coming out of the Covid-19 crisis, Auckland Council will be more hard-pressed, fiscally speaking, than before and there will be a need to act decisively to rejuvenate our arts, sporting and cultural sectors.

Andrew Barnes, the chair of Regional Facilities Auckland

It is incumbent upon Auckland's leaders to effectively use what we have to turn the city into a drawcard which will support tourism, both domestic and international, and make Auckland a serious competitor with other cities for major events.

Do we have enough going on in Auckland, facilities - and event-wise - that is attractive enough for people to choose to come here and spend time and money? Or is Auckland just a gateway to other, more exciting destinations?

These were questions posed in a recent independent international research report and the answers were 'no' and 'yes' respectively. Auckland also ranked last out of eight New Zealand cities in a 2018 Quality of Life Survey when respondents were asked whether their city or local area had a 'rich and diverse arts scene'.

There is no doubt we need a plan for investment in and competitive growth of Auckland's assets to make Auckland a world-class destination and an exciting and vibrant community.

The example of Melbourne as a leading cultural and sporting city comes to mind. To that end, we do face some hard choices. For example, there is a realistic possibility that some sporting events will not return to Auckland after the Covid-19 crisis, leaving the major Auckland sporting fixtures as one All Blacks test annually, the Blues and Warriors matches and some domestic and one-day international cricket.

To accommodate those, we need only one stadium which supports rectangular field sports. It is not economical or sensible to keep trying to sustain two.

While we are streamlining our thinking about sporting events, we need to expand our ambition for concerts and other large arts events. Right now, the concert discussion is small-picture, a squabble about where the current annual handful of concerts should be hosted.

Concerts drive revenue, and the economic and social vision for Auckland must include attracting more of these events overall – not just bringing more to Eden Park at the expense of other civic venues.

Other cities are getting on top of this challenge – Christchurch will be able to host indoor concerts (up to 36,000 people) year-round – and as long as Auckland's leaders prize talking over doing, we will keep falling further behind. We also need better, smaller venues, and these need to be located across the super city, not just in the CBD.

If the question is what we are going to do about Auckland's assets when we come out of the Covid-19 crisis, the answer cannot be persisting with endless, fruitless debates over the venue for a given sporting fixture with no real vision for our arts, culture and heritage and no clear ambition for the wider Auckland community. That is not a vision for Auckland.

Andrew Barnes is the chairman of Regional Facilities Auckland, an Auckland Council organisation that runs its events and entertainment spaces. He is also the founder of Perpetual Guardian; a director of Complectus Limited, and the director of Coulthard Barnes.