$40-45 Million Soccer Specific Stadium - Petone Phoenix

Listening to veitch on sport and he says Morgan and the owners have put in motion a way to build a purpose built football stadium. 12k-15k capacity. Close to the rail lines. 

Interesting. 

Talk of moving to Petone/Newtown park..

Smithy currently putting forward his views with John Morrison. 

Sounds like Petone is an option been bantered around primarily as it is a different council to deal with 

Really? 

Will be a lot (including myself) eating their words after so vocally saying "it'll never happen" if that does end up happening. 

I still really doubt it will though....

I'm still doubtful. I feel this is just a ploy to get better terms from the stadium. Morrison makes some good points that Westpac stadium is owned by the people of Wellington so should serve the people of Wellington.

It was only yesterday that Morgan was saying that the stadium should put seating in closer to the pitch to make it rectangular etc. 

So I think you're right Ryan. 

Its almost a "if you're not going to make the stadium football friendly, then we'll just build one that is" 

I think if you are going to build a new stadium it has to be next to Westpac or something. Going to Petone would turn off alot of Wellingtonians even if it isn't that far on the train. They were so right to build the stadium where it was but screwed up by making it an oval.

This.

Location is a serious issue for this.  Petone and Newtown park will be a much harder sell for casual punters than Westpac is purely due to location and transport access.

I love the idea of a soccer specific stadium but you can't just build it and expect people to turn up no matter where it is.

I missed the petone part. It would have to be directly next to the stadium. Which I imagine the council wouldn't be too keen on. Plus where would you put it in that area? 

That money would be better spent putting a roof on the current stadium and covering the walk up from the train station

The roof isn't that relevant. If you only get 7k then there is always enough room for people  to find cover. Surely the roof only matters when your crowds become plus 10k? Also a roof would cost 80mill apparently so it's better value to build a new stadium for 30mill.

Ahem.... what was it you were saying again, against Auckland crowds in the days of the Knights and Kingz? Something about them being unwilling to travel because they were Aucklanders!

Interesting to see people comment about the travelling aspect,i would suggest there are a heap of people coming to games at the moment who dont come from Wellington city itself.Always seems to be a lot of people using trains and jumping in their cars and heading north after games.

So im guessing its okay for these people to travel but if your in town its to much to ask people to do the same.Bloody hell us Phoenix fans are a fickle lot.LOL

Gareth Morgan,then Mystery Morrison talking to Veitchy 

http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/auckland/player/ondemand/2120927386-guy-smith---john-morrison--phoenix-on-the-move-

Find it funny how people from Porirua, Kapiti and Lower and Upper Hutt are fine for travelling into Wellington, but Wellington people won't travel out to the Hutt.

If was in Petone it could be a bit of nightmare though unless there was parking or it was near Petone/Ava Station.

Name change to Phoetone Phoenix?

Another factor in all this is resource consent - you can't just buy land somewhere and plonk a stadium on it. Newtown is all residential and there's no way it could happen there. Petone might work but you still have to consider noise levels and light pollution from stadium light towers, not to mention parking and other infrastructure concerns like impact on traffc flows etc. Not only is the current stadium close to a public transport hub, but its also in the middle of a commercial/industrial area by major arterial roads. If they could build another smaller stadium somewhere near the current one it could work, but I can't see one anywhere else ever getting off the ground.

Anyway I think this is just a bluff by Welnix to get the council behind them a bit more.

Hutt Park raceway, essentially on the rail line, a new station could be built. How many of the 5000 fans at present don't use the train to come to games? Doubt you'd lose too many fans with such a move. How long does it take by train to go from kaiwharawhara to woburn. In fact looking at the map, a train line goes right hehind the raceway land

I'm with AJ on this. It's a hell of a lot easier to get from anywhere in the Wellington region, other than the Hutt or Wainui, to the Ring of Fire than it is to get to the Hutt Valley. Especially if you want to have a few drinks and use public transport. Or if you don't have a car. You might get a few new people from the Hutt coming but I doubt it'd be as many as you'd lose from the rest of the region. Even people in Karori or Newtown would have to switch buses or catch a bus and a train to get there, let alone people in Kapiti, Porirua, or the Northern suburbs.

They should concentrate on Petone. Train station nearby. Good for people up north that don't want to drive their shiny black BMW to Newtown. Packed stadium, the Hutt valley would get behind it, never had a professional sports team and I'm sure most people from Wellington would trade the extra commute for the benefits on a proper football stadium. I would expect a bus and train service included in the ticket cost. Best news in years, the cricket stadium wellington never needed  is terrible for football.

Never going to happen. My bet is that this is designed to get the honchos at the stadium to listen and work with the club to improve the matchday experience for patrons.

Yeah because the population in the Hutt valley doesn't matter.i stand by my comments a free train ride to Petone isn't going to take away fans. If anything the more intimate stadium closer to the game would bring in more fans.  How could anyone be against the yellow fever chanting on the train to Petone.

as for the "not fans" call, that's a straw man. We need more casual punters turning up to make the club viable. If something makes it harder for those people to come then that's obviously bad

Read my previous comments, public transport, 10-30 minutes from the current venue. Parking without ticket wardens or meters .Would like to see a poll on this site to see what everyone thinks about it. 

Good on Gareth for raising the issue - who knows how much of his purpose in raising it is a negotiating ploy and how much is a serious proposition but a discussion well worth having either way.

The fundamental problems with Westpac are: it is an oval stadium hosting predominently "rectangular"  sports and it has no roof in a city with a dodgy climate. Its huge strength is its absolutely brilliant location - walk to town, by the main railway station and just off SH 1.

Moving the Nix out of Westpac would kill its viabilty - rugby can barely afford to pay the playing day charges now let alone the increase in cost they would incur with no Nix games. Something would have to give.

Petone and Newtown are, by comparison, terrible locations.

It would take some political courage (and probably or a few guns held to heads by stadium clients) but I think a study should be commissioned on converting the stadium in to a rectangular stadium with a roof - the concourse is done and I suspect a fair bit of the foundations could be utilised.

In parallel the Basin could be tarted up, if needs be, to ensure it meets the needs of "oval" sports although it seems to already be rated as a great, traditional, cricket venue.

This makes more sense to me (at least knowing the feasibility and cost of conversion) than spending $30m on a stadium in some hard to get to location and turning Westpac (a community owned asset) in to a white elephant. 

Two tiers of 15k.  Only open the bottom tier, utilise the Sky coverage to try and avoid focussing on the higher tier, mix the colour of the seats instead of the sea of Yellow (Look at how Bluetongue it's hard to tell there is no one there.  Make sure the two tiers heavily overlap so effectively there is a roof over the lower tier formed by the upper one.

Should have been done when the Yellow elephant was built.

My points of reference for what I would like to see are Skilled or AAMI parks - with a roof.

Watching football in a football stadium is so much better than being miles from the action in a muli-purpose oval stadium.

I think the points are:

- it doesn't need to be 36k, a 24k stadium would be a better fit with the regions needs

- a more appropriate to needs sized stadium, sitting closer to the action with a roof would result in better crowds i.e it wouldn't be 2/3rds empty.