Although there is much to be said in favour of the ACT government's latest proposal for the site of the new Canberra Stadium it is, with all due respect to Andrew Barr who kicked off the search when he was sports minister 15 years ago, hard to muster up much in the way of enthusiasm.
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Like the ABC's iconic Blue Hills, and television's Neighbours and Home and Away, the ACT's stadium search is a never-ending story that may take up to three decades to tell.
The proposed completion date for a new stadium to be built in Bruce is 2033. That is 24 years - or just under a quarter of a century - since the original announcement the ACT government was considering a new facility in 2009.
In the years since then old wars have ended and new ones have begun. International boundaries have been redrawn. The millennials have moved on into middle age and Generation Z has entered the workforce. Meanwhile Canberra's population has exploded from 351,868 to 478,000 and whole new suburbs have come into being.
Back when the stadium site search first began, the Chief Minister's latest-favoured site at the intersection of Haydon Drive and Battye Street - on the site of an existing oval and NSWRL headquarters - was not far from the ACT's "ultima thule".
Today, courtesy of the massive development that has taken place north of the lake, it is within striking distance of the demographic heart of the territory.
That, of course, is one of the reasons Bruce makes sense. Another is that it is close to the public transport corridor and, even further down the track (by 2050 apparently) there might even be a tram stop. One lives in hope.
Mr Barr has made it clear that despite the fact up to 11 possible sites in Bruce are being considered, he has his heart set on the NSWRL site with its existing oval and proximity to large areas of nearly vacant land.
On the downside, there aren't much in the way of shops, restaurants or hotels in that neck of the woods at the moment. But, given the rate at which Canberra is growing and that 2033 is almost a decade away, that will almost certainly have changed by then.
The government's biggest challenge is going to be to get the community to take this latest proposal seriously. It is, after all, the seventh study into a new stadium in a decade and a half.
Canberrans have, over that time, been teased with a multitude of proposals, all of which have come to nought. They have included a rebuild of the Canberra Stadium, a new stadium to be built on the eastern side of the Canberra Stadium, a new "super stadium" at the Canberra Stadium site, an open stadium at Civic, a Civic stadium with a retractable roof and a stadium at EPIC.
This latest proposal, which is slanted heavily in favour of what was once the headquarters of the Canberra Raiders, will be seen by many in the sports fraternity as just one of many.
And then, of course, there is the issue of paying for it. The cost of building a 30,000-seat stadium at the preferred site has been estimated at $500 million in 2024 dollars.
It's not hard to see why the Barr government isn't in a hurry to start breaking ground, given its existing commitments to extending light rail to Woden and to redeveloping what is now the North Canberra Hospital.
It is already looking at infrastructure spending totalling many billions of dollars over the coming decade.
If, as appears to be the case, financial considerations are at least in part responsible for this tin being repeatedly kicked down the road, the government should just come out and say that.
It has done a very poor job of managing community expectations on this so far.
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