It is the last anchor project. And the city now wants to build a multi-purpose arena, not merely a rugby stadium. But how much is that ambition going to cost? JOHN McCRONE reports.

Yes, it could be done an awful lot cheaper. Steve van der Pol, business development manager for construction firm Arrow International, grabs his calculator.

Back in 2013, van der Pol reveals, Arrow submitted a costed proposal to build Christchurch its 35,000-seater roofed rugby stadium, using the same technology the company employed to build Dunedin's Forsyth Barr.



"It was an unsolicited bid we submitted to the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (Cera)."



Van der Pol says the proposal didn't go anywhere as the stadium project was being put on the back-burner. But Arrow had China State Construction lined up as a funder and joint venture partner. So the estimates were done with proper care.

SUPPLIED Pre-feasibility study gives artist's impression of what a solid roof arena with retractable turf might look like.

"The lump price we quoted was under $300 million." So take the construction cost and divide that by crowd capacity. Van der Pol taps in the numbers. "That works out at under $9000 a seat."



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* New Christchurch arena could have solid roof and retractable playing field

* Ed Sheeran's promoter: Why we're not going to Wellington and Christchurch



Now what is the Government's pre-feasibility study quoting?



Its preferred option is a smaller 30,000 seat stadium with a solid roof and retractable turf, costing $496m. Near enough half a billion dollars.



So – tap, tap, tap. Van der Pol turns to display the result. That comes out almost twice the price at $16,500 per seat.



Quite a differential. It makes you wonder what all the extra money is paying for, van der Pol says as diplomatically as he can manage.



DELAYED DECISION MOVES FORWARD



It is the question many have been asking since the pre-feasibility study – carried out as the last official action of Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee – was finally delivered in August.



Is it just gold-plated ambition that keeps seeing the cost of a new stadium arriving back at a build figure of $500m? Perhaps the price first mentioned is the price that has now stuck?

The short answer from those involved is that Dunedin merely bought itself an indoor rugby field. Christchurch wants a multi-purpose arena – a city stage just as capable of hosting big concerts and exhibitions as footie matches.

IAIN MCGREGOR/STUFF Test match rugby is the drawcard. But how much should a city pay for the promise of a game a year?

And half a billion dollars looks a fair price to pay for that, even if getting to the decision has been a little backwards.

As is by now familiar history, the ambition to put a rugby stadium right in the central city was born out of the Government's "100 day Blueprint".



Lancaster Park was determined an insurance write-off. So Cera identified three city blocks in Madras St as the new site. The capacity of the ground was dictated by what seemed necessary to host an All Blacks match every few years.



Christchurch City Council (CCC) was pressured to sign a cost-share agreement where it would go 50/50 on a $506m construction. Originally it was to be completed by 2017 for this year's Lions tour.



But then the council resisted. The insurance situation on Lancaster Park was still unclear. Rushing into a $253m spend would have forced a crippling rate rise.



CCC manage to park the stadium project at a safe distance in its Long Term Plan (LTP). Nothing happening until about 2025.



However rugby lovers have been getting impatient. And the temporary Addington AMI stadium can only last another four years before needing at least $8m of refurbishment.



So this year the council agreed to get the ball rolling, letting the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) commission a pre-feasibility study from a team of largely Australian stadium designers and experts.



It was not quite a business case, but the recommendations came back as remarkably specific. And bang on the half billion mark the cost share envisaged.



The study costed a variety of options. First off, it agreed the actual original Blueprint specification – a roofed 35,000 seater with 4000 extra seats for test matches – was just too expensive.



That would have cost $600m on top of the $60m needed to purchase the stadium's six hectare central city site.

It then said, at the other end of the scale – if for some reason CCC wound up paying for the whole stadium out of its set-aside $253m – that would only pay for an unsatisfactory "provincial" 17,500 seat sports ground, with old-fashioned stand roofing.

SUPPLIED Only $300m: Construction firm Arrow's 2013 proposal for an ETFE roofed stadium for Christchurch.

So the choice narrows to two options really. And the study claims both are much the same price.

One is to go the Forsyth Barr route. That uses a lightweight transparent roof system – ETFE plastic sheeting – under which grass can grow. It would cost $465m for a stadium with a capacity of 30,000. Or $15,500 per seat created.



The other is to instead have a stadium with a solid steel roof and retractable pitch. The grass turf would be grown on a moveable platform that sits outside most of the time, leaving a bare concrete floor for hosting concerts and other city events.



The pre-feasibility study reports the cost of a moving field is only an extra $30m or so. A number of stadiums overseas, like Sapporo in Japan, Phoenix in Arizona, and Dortmund in Germany, have tested the technology.



For $496m – not a lot more than the ETFE option, and exactly the cost-share figure – Christchurch could get the same number of seats with all the extra functionality of a fully enclosed arena.



Throw in some doubts about the suitability of a hot house-style roof in a Canterbury summer – installing cooling ventilation might eat up any price advantage of ETFE, the study says – and really the choices comes down to just this one.



THE COUNCIL CRUNCHES NUMBERS



When reported, it sounded like a done deal. However in the complex politics surrounding Christchurch's rebuild, the pre-feasibility study simply stands as a Government-sponsored independent report.



Now it is the turn of the city council to have its say. And the job of leading that review has just fallen into the lap of CCC head of parks, Andrew Rutledge.



Rutledge sits down in his office with a clutch of briefing documents presented to the council table earlier in the week. He starts by spelling out the timeline for making decisions.



Over the next three months, he says, council officers will be digging deeper into the technical and financial details of the options.



Then something more like a full business case will go to the council table for its budget discussions next year.



"We need to make sure our councillors have all the information they require to make a good decision in time for next year's Long Term Plan."



Rutledge says there will also be further public consultation. "It's become a bit of a catchphrase, but we want this to be a citizen-led process. We want people to understand it and own it."



If all goes smoothly – and that includes finding out post-election how much money is really in the pot from the Government's side – then the stadium could be open several years sooner than expected.



Giving two years to finalise the design, three years for the construction, that would make the target date 2022 rather than 2025, Rutledge says.

"I know that may still frustrate some people who say we should start straight away. But I think we will be playing on the grass in five years."

DEAN KOZANIC/STUFF A multi-use arena would take the load off Hagley Park in hosting events like the Electric Avenue music festival.

So on to current council thinking about the shape of the project itself. Rutledge says the pre-feasibility study has indeed crystallised a change in concept.

The Blueprint did start off in the Dunedin mould of imagining a rugby pitch which could double up as an events venue. But now it is clear that it is worth paying more for a facility that is a flexible events venue first.



Hence the study's change of language from talking about a stadium to a multi-use arena (MUA).



Whether it is $300m or $500m, the cost is going to be a big chunk of change, Rutledge says. And Christchurch has the one shot at getting it right.



"With the stadia of old, like Lancaster Park, if you needed to make a change, you just bolted it on the side of something. Or bulldozed a part of it."



But a roofed arena is an integrated structure, Rutledge says. "Whatever we build now – well, that's probably it until 2090."



And as the pre-feasibility study highlighted, a rugby ground in Christchurch would in the end only host about 20 game days a year.



There would be eight Crusader matches, six provincial rugby matches, a second tier All Blacks fixture, then perhaps a rugby league international, a professional soccer game, and a few other one-offs.



So Rutledge says while no one expects a stadium is going to make a profit, it is pretty clear that a venue which is just as good for staging concerts and other events is now important.



After all, who knows if rugby will be as big in 2050. For the next generation of sports fans it could be drone racing or X-games stunting.



Unimaginable as that may seem today, a flexible space is the key to avoid being locked in by the needs of one sport. And concerts are in fact the better payers when it comes to stadium use.



The pre-feasibility study put some numbers around it, saying Auckland's Spark Arena is having seven concerts this year, including Adele, Guns N' Roses and Justin Bieber. A $37m impact on the city from 126,000 visitors.

Dunedin's Forsyth Barr has also been making hay with the South Island bookings while Christchurch has been out of action. Ed Sheeran sold out three concerts for March 2018, or about 108,000 tickets.

SUPPLIED Roll it out: University of Phoenix has a pitch that slides straight out and in on rails.

But as a rugby-first stadium, the Forsyth Barr is a compromise. Concert promoters have to pay big bonds for potential damage to the grass. Set up takes time and money. An ETFE roof has bad acoustics for a music performance.

Rutledge says the study argued a properly set-up Christchurch would take all the South Island concert business back.



An indoor arena with a concrete floor could host every other kind of event too. One weekend it might be monster trucks going around in circles churning up mud, the next an Electric Avenue style music festival or a better homes exhibition.



The pre-feasibility study ran a financial comparison of the two stadium options.



It said a rugby-first ETFE design would average a total of 24 events a year. Annually, that would produce a $400,000 operational loss. Whereas an event-favouring MUA should attract 36 events a year and make instead a $600,000 operational profit.



Rutledge says that is not the whole story. Refurbishing either stadium design every 15 to 25 years would be another cost to consider. No stadium is going to make money.



However it shows why the MUA is suddenly sounding like a far fancier project, with a pitch that is going to whiz in and out on wheels.



And he says there is a certain snobbishness about sports getting well-built public facilities.



"Stadia get isolated by quite a few members of the community. They go, it'll never pay for itself. The answer is, they're dead right. But nor will an art gallery. Nor will a museum."



Then think of Christchurch with the country's first proper city arena – a place where 20,000 to 40,000 people can gather on a regular basis for some event of value to them.



"An MUA is about what kind of city you are. They're not economic engine rooms."



And as parks chief, Rutledge adds he is keen to get the city's big community events – the night noodle markets and lantern festivals – out of Hagley Park if possible. The ground damage is considerable.



So the MUA concept might seem an expensive luxury, but also there is a rate-payer cost to not having one at the moment.



REFINING THE DESIGN



The general conclusions of the pre-feasibility study appear endorsed. It is the detailed implementation Rutledge is now working on.



Pulling out a batch of sketches, he gives a glimpse of this further technical work.



From his turf background and a knowledge of Christchurch's needs, Rutledge says in fact he thinks a hybrid roof system, and a modular moveable pitch, might be the way for the city to go.



A big concern is to make the best use of the 6ha site. Rutledge says a plus is that event parking is not going to be an issue for a central city MUA.

"You won't need to build any [multi-story car parks] as on a Saturday night, all the retail area car parking is going to be empty. You'll be a five minute walk away."

JOE ALLISON/PHOTOSPORT The ETFE plastic roof of Dunedin's Forsyth Barr stadium. Making hay while Christchurch is out of action.

However the most obvious way of designing the retractable pitch won't be the best.

Rutledge says if the turf simply shuttles straight in and straight out as one whole rugby field on rails, immediately you can see how much space that will waste directly next to the arena.



Ideally, the arena ought to be surrounded by a large concourse that is itself part of the event hosting area. It is where the fan zones, food tents and other add-on activities could go.



"Activating the spaces outside is just as important as the event inside," says Rutledge.



So Christchurch might want to investigate some of the new technology under development, he says.



"In the UK, they are researching a modular system of trays." The grass is grown on 4.5m by 9m pallets. A self-driving jack could scoot under each tray, whisking it away in sections.



Rutledge smiles at the mental picture of rectangles of turf motoring across the MUA site to a storage bay. He agrees the temptation will be to be cheap-skate on elements like the moveable pitch.



"But what do we leave for future generations? The retention of as much of the open space as possible is going to be a really, really, important consideration."



Another design refinement could be a hybrid roof.



Rutledge says a problem with a solid roof is the grass will start to die after just a couple of days. So why not have the best of both worlds – a roof with a translucent central ETFE panel?



Possibly that might compromise the acoustics for concerts. But the grass would be healthier and the arena flooded with natural light for daytime events and exhibitions. These are the kinds of question the council team needs to explore, he says.



Yet a further issue likely to crop up in consultation is the call to tack on other projects, like the ice rink promised to the city's ice skating and ice hockey community.



Rutledge says it sounds logical – except the MUA is not really now a sports complex. It is the city's general events space.



​That illustrates the change in thinking. The whole point is do more than just provide another rugby field.

"If you were going to consider an ice rink, you'd probably consider bolting that on to the Metro Sports Facility."

However Rutledge agrees other suggestions that have been floating around – like a sports museum for Christchurch – could quite easily fit into the space beneath the stands.

He says it is another reason to start the public consultation soon, yet not rush the actual decision. Once rate-payers get a clearer idea of what they might be buying for their money, the reason why it might have to be so expensive should begin to make more sense.

CAN CASH-STRAPPED CHRISTCHURCH AFFORD IT?

Still there will be the questions. On the face of it, the pre-feasibility study looks to have exaggerated the cost of the ETFE-roofed Forsyth Barr option.

The Dunedin stadium had a construction cost of just $175m – although a final bill of $224m, as its land purchase rather blew out. Yet it has managed to host concerts, boat shows, market days, even a motocross event, as well as big rugby matches.

Arrow's Van der Pol acknowledges the compromises involved. The motocross damaged the grass. Setting up for concerts is a mission. However how much can a cash-strapped Christchurch really afford to spend?

The pre-feasibility study itself doesn't claim a huge difference between the two main venue options in terms of the events they will attract.

It assumes an MUA with a moveable pitch would get only one extra concert a year, and 10 rather than four other non-sporting events and exhibitions.

So if an ETFE arena is not as expensive as the study estimates, then that also likely makes it just as capable of running at a small operational profit.

The other uncertainty in the equation is how much of a financial contribution the Government will make. The original deal was 50/50. But on paper at least, that was for a 39,000 seat, ETFE-roofed, rugby stadium.

Does the new MUA concept look like a gold-plated, down-sized, version of that? And from Wellington's point of view, if Christchurch gets one, won't every other New Zealand city expect one too.

What will the decision be if central Government doesn't want to match the $253m that CCC has been asked to commit to?

So water to go under the bridge. However, as both the pre-feasibility study and CCC certainly now argue, the MUA concept of building a maximally flexible facility makes the most sense in terms of Christchurch's long term future.

It is indeed a chunk of change. But then – as ultimately the new stadium will be paid for by decades of debt – it is city's future generations who are going to have to look back and feel the best choice got made.