Betie’s (National Stadium) Bowl

Booo to Bertie. In the coming election, please vote for anyone but Bertie. Go on you know you really want to. You want a public transport system, a heath service that works don’t you.

There are so many more important things than a stadium like say em HEALTH, EDUCATION, INFASTRUCTURE, CRIME, well everything really! Its just a matter of proitity, really, and yes we all know Lansdowne is completely rubbish beyond comprehension. Sorry GregF, I bet Bertie will run out of money (IF he gets elected) and the stadium won’t get built in the near future.

If Ahern is re-elected as Taoiseach – which I’m sure he will, then surely he will have to continue with projects such as Luas and the Metro (as well as the bowl). If any of the others get in, then we will get the situation where badly needed things like the metro are taken off the plans again and re-examined (adding years to the timeframe) before it resurfaces as the Michael Noonan Magic Roundabout train line. If there was some consistence in Governments in this country then things might get done for a change.

Although FFs slogan should be “A lot done – bloody loads more to do”

ahem, it is to my understanding that all parties plan to continue with luas, metro etc. And hasn’t the metro gone through its first planning stage (or was that a FF pre-election hype? twas in around february-ish, i think). It seems to me that it would be silly to not proceed as quick as possible with both as they they already be examined and reexamined since 1991, and remember FF decided to built the luas, then suddenly decided to change their mind and re-release it blah, blah, blah

Consistence in governments……FF have held power here either with a majority or in coalition for nearly 70 years of the state’s 80 year history…also maybe their slogan should be “Only a few DONE a lot more to DO”

Not that I support FF – I just wish that infrastructure (especially public transport) was actually built and not just talked about.

Why oh why (Daily Mail bit here) does every change of government involve taking what bit of infrastructure is planned by the last stopping any movement on it (whilst they re-examine it – i.e. rename a few stops on the metro line) and the relaunch the project, usually just before the next change of government, when the process begins again and continues ad nauseum.

If a company in the private sector operated like this they would have gone to the wall years ago. I think all infrastructure and in particular public transport building should have the politics taken out of it and a company (PPP) with teeth should be given the opportunity to develop it in its entirety – the government should step back and let it run at arms length from the govt. Just make sure they have to do urgent stuff like metro & luas immediately!

But then again I’m an optimist

Luke, with FF recent record, it really makes me wonder how…

Todays poles shows an increase in support for FF. When will you people learn…

Relax, FF are here to stay. Bertie will get his stadium, 65,000 seats, and let the rest go for the moment. OPW will run the show. Laura, thanks for the memories.

well really deepnote, you surprise me sometimes….

sorry rob, but i dont think anyone really believes the other lot would have done any better than Bertie and friends…remember the rainbow?? – Labour sound like they have some good policies but were in government for 5 stratight years, first with the F’in F’ers and then with the F’in G-obshites before handing over a crumbling health service / public transport system to the FF/PD coalition – hardly inspires confidence in their ability does it?

And seing as i mentioned FG…have they been taking something lately ?…between promising to pay kids to stay in school, refunding eircom losses, tripling the first time buyers grant and providing free travel on Dublin Bus between 10 and 4…even i can see that there is no way in hell we could afford such election gimicks.

I’m happy enough – the Luas tracks are already laid right beside my house and house prices are rocketing in my area as a result 🙂

I never thought i would vote for FF – I am doing so mainly to keep the Sinn Fein guy out (him and the F’in F’er are neck and neck in the polls) but also because i wan’t to see the National Stadium built.

Landsdowne is embarressing and whilst it would be nice to have our National Stadium on that site, nobody has addressed the question of where we would play whilst it was being constructed.

I just wanted to post on behalf of voter apathy. A complete neglect of all Irish newspapers for the last six months and a tendencey to only watch Sky News means that I have no information on the current election.

And this is a comfortable (though lazy and useless) position to occupy. I tend to find that modern Irish Politics make me feel ashamed and saddened. I just don’t want to vote for any of them, and the individuals that I do recognise as being skilled politicians insist on being members of parties that I slightly detest.

hmmmmm….

fjp

fjp, I am most gravely concerned about your civic depression, at least get out and vote for someone who will build something

exactly, whether we like them or not we are the ones who put them there so if your not happy go out and vote for somebody else!!!

remember, people died so that we could have the right to vote for an irish government in an irish state…

I do appreciate that people sacrificed their lives for me to vote, hell, my grandfather was one of the fighters.

But apathy is a strong disease, and the voter variation is strongest.

fjp

yeah – I can imagine Mitterand with a pint of Bass discussing Man U…….

Let’s get out and vote for Bertie? Pul-lease. Just because he has this grandiose idea of building a monument to himself in Abbotstown. It’s this kind of woolly thinking that has this country sleepwalking into a Fianna Fail overall majority. And we all know what happened the last time – with rezoning good-oh as Ray Burke and the boys helped themselves.
Come clean GregF. You sound like a dyed-in-the-wool Fianna Failer rather than someone who really thinks Bertie is good for architecture…

I’ll be voting FF in this election too, mainly because of the absolute lack of anything from the opposition parties rather than anything FF have done. To say the opposition has been dire would be to understate the situation. FG are a complete joke, I saw bits of that debate on TV last night and all Baldy Noonan could do was attack the governments record, the guy doen’t seem to have any policies of his own. If he had any political cop-on he could have easily won that debate, but he hasn’t.

A National Stadium is obviously needed and the knockers don’t seem to have any alternative proposals of their own (typical FG). While FF are far from ideal, they’re the best of a bad lot, plus I think they won’t go into coalition with the anti-everything Greens which is another plus in my book.

Since FF failed to get the overall majority which they were daydreaming about, will the PDs give the stadium the nod?
A compromise looks inevitable – perhaps a 60,000 seat stadium with the rest of the campus postponed.

ah, scrap the rest of it and just build the ice rink for us curlers.

The stadium part will probably be built to a 60-65k capacity (cost about $300m euro or thereabouts) with the rest of the campus deferred. I’ve always thought that the indoor arena part of the overall plan should be built in downtown Dublin anyway, the docklands being the most obvious place. It would attract people into the area for concerts, sporting events (there’ll be an ice-hockey franchise like the one Belfast has in Dublin in a few years time) and exhibitions etc.

If you look at North America (which is at the forefront of stadia building and location), their indoor arenas are usually in downtown locations, while their stadiums are in suburban settings e.g. New York, Boston, Washington, Montreal etc, etc. The arena could be heavily financed by the private sector too, since it’ll corner the market for indoor concerts (the Point and the RDS are just warehouses after all with relatively small capacities). I think it’d provide a nice focus for the docklands redevelopment (pathetic and all as thats been so far) since the Abbey theatre won’t be moving after all.

Enough negative crap, we now have before us a chance to build an Irish stadium that can be a great place, where the architecture is part of the experience. The transport links have to be part of the game. The edge city site offers as many advantages as disadvantages. Crowd surges from a stadium are not such friendly things for the neighbors in city centres no matter how much attendees may enjoy the journey to and from the stadium.

The arena should be in the heart of the city somewhere. Docklands could be good for architecture, but access might be a problem. An arena should have an event of some kind nearly every night so it becomes an energy generator for city life. Therefore, the closer to the urban core the better. Capacity is much smaller than a stadium so crowds are not such an issue. Arenas have had a positive effect on surrounding development and property values in many places where they have been built in city centres.

However, be careful when thinking arenas are profitable property developments. This is almost never the case.

If on the same site as the proposed Bowl etc., they were to put the 1 Billion pounds into developing a new town with possibly accommadation for between 10-20 thousand people, Ireland would reap by far more benefits than if the Stadium were to be built.
The biggest Crisus in Ireland isn’t the lack of a stadium, rather it’s the Crisus in Housing Supply.

The stadium doesn’t cost 1 billion, the entire campus costs that (allegedly). The stadium would cost in the region of €300m I would think, and would have large spin-off benefits to the economy. Isn’t there enough traffic on the M50 already without building entire towns along it. Whats needed is higher density housing in existing residential areas, not creating entirely new towns within the city. And how would building a town on the site benefit the whole country?

just for proper comparison sake, the Millenium Stadium in Cardiff is located in Cardiff city centre and is 2-300m down the street from Cardiff’s main train station and bus station. and of course, it can count on its huge (population) neighbour England to attend games i.e. arrive by train and bus (there is also a civic/ adminsitrative district area within walking distance of the city centre where dozens of coaches park for the really big events).
Of course this can mean that you can get an influx of ‘yobbos’ coming into the city but i only saw problems like that twice in my year there.

Two things…

Liverpool FC (the world’s greatest football club) are about to build a brand new all seater 55,000 stadium for 70 million sterling….. even they balked at building a 75,000 seater and they could have filled it at least 20 times a season, probably 30 (including Champions League and various cup games)…. but they didn’t want the debt…
see for pictures: http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/news/drilldown/N135043020517-1147.htm

Also are regards Cardiff, every time there is soccer played there, there are massive congestion problems, the first few games had massive traffic tailbacks on routes in with people having to abandon their cars and start walking to get to the stadium on time, abandoned cars made the problem worse….

[This message has been edited by Paul Clerkin (edited 22 May 2002).]

Very thought provoking, Paul. If Liverpool can build it so cheaply, why can’t we?
I bet that’s the solution Bertie and the PDs hammer out when they hop back into bed together. A 55,000 seater stadium, costing no more than 250,000 euro. No tennis courts, no golf academy, no centres of sporting excellence. Just a stadium. What a shame they knobbled the FAI’s Eircom Park – it would have been nearly built by now.

What’s in the 70 mil stirling? Land cost? Fittings & equipment? Design fees? Financing charges? Construction cost only? Can stadium accomodate rugby? This is a suspiciously low number.

The Liverpool design takes the UK cheap stadium approach of separating each stand, no way to circulate around stadium within the stadium. This kind of stadium has a very different feel from a full surround. The need for segregation of supporters is not such an issue here.

Word of caution: a national stadium has requirements that a football club stadium doesn’t, especially one to take both soccer and rugby.

£70 million sounds very low alright. Remember Eircom Park? Originally it was to cost no more than £65m, and that was set in stone. Soon after the price inevitably doubled to a much more realistic level. The cost of these things is nearly always under-stated in the plans. The stadium in Wales was to have cost £125m but ended up costing £200m.

It seems though that with Stadium Ireland we are doing the opposite, finding the highest price possible and then working our way back from that. £1 billion is a nice round figure isn’t it? Never mind that thats the over-stated figure for the entire campus not just the stadium. Convenient that some anti-stadium people use that figure as the cost of the stadium alone. 300m euro is a much more realistic price tag for a 65k all-seater stadium.

A thought just struck me on the way home last night – How much did the Government give to the GAA to rebuild Croke Park? I think it was at least £150m – correct me if I’m wrong – Hows about this for an idea give the same amount to the FAI and the IRFU to develop/redevelop there own stadia. Indeed the govenment could assist them in any way possible (PP, project management etc) then everyone would be happy at the cost of £300m. The cost could be borne out through tax incentives and 0% interest loans from the government (and National Lottery) to these organisations. You may even save money by using (near to)duplicate plans for the stadia. Lansdowne Road is a perfect site for a Rugby stadium in terms of transportation links. How about using the underutilised St Anne Park Raheney as a site for the soccer stadium (run a small spur off the Dart line and you’re there).

Any thoughts?

[This message has been edited by Rory W (edited 23 May 2002).]

i think you have your hand in this one too dermot

Frank MacDonalds idea is very good. Building a stadium at the Ringsend bottle plant. The site is twice the size of Lansdowne and is set in a triangle of sport projects in the area. Irishtown Stadium and Sean Moore park. It is ideally situated at the east link and a couple of minutes drive from the port tunnel and about the same distance from the city centre as Lansdowne Road. It is close to the following DART stations: Barrow Street, Lansdowne, Pearse, Tara and Connolly. It is close to the developing Dockland and ferry terminals in Dublin Port. The only problem is bus services but there would probably bus links created if it was built.

Who’s dermot?

from sky news regarding a new stadium at wembley which will be ready by “2005” …

“Mr Crozier revealed that the new stadium itself would cost £358million, although other costs such as local infrastructure and parking areas will push the price higher.”

sounds like a realistic figure for Stadium Ireland too (just the stadium that is as thats probably all we’ll be getting in the end)

Wembley is 90,000 seats and has to include athletics conversion too. We will know in the next few days the capacity for the Bertie Bowl, but certainly much less than Wembley.

That’s in sterling folks so that makes it €586 million which makes it a bit on the pricey side

i just saw a thing on the telly. It was about the stadiums for the world cup …. they were only required to have eight stadiums between them (korea and Japan) but they’ve actually built ten EACH excluding the ones they already had.
One i thought was pretty amazing … the pitch actually resides outside the roofed over stadium in order to get the best of the sun and weather…. its then rolled into place and can even be rotated to a different orientation while in there.
Yes theyve got loads of money to do these things.. but doesnt it put the big squables over stadiums here into perspective ?

My main point of contention is that the Koreans have built excellent stadia for $180 million each and we are looking at 2 to 3 times that for ours. I would just like to know why such a large difference in cost!

The £1 billion cost for the Stadium Ireland project was very significantly exaggerated in the first place.
And it must be remembered includes the relocation of the State Laboratories, estimated at £140 million plus, the redevelopment of the existing infrastructure, the provision of a rail station at Abbotstown on the existing Maynooth train link, a 50-metre swimming pool, landscaped gardens over a vast area, huge amounts of office space and so on ad nauseum. The stadium itself would cost nowhere near the magical figures being put across by both the newspapers and opposition parties.
Also, most of the stadia in the Far East are of capacity between 40,000 to 60,000. The cost rises exponentially according to size and Stadium Ireland was supposed to be 80,000 though that will almost certainly be scaled down very significantly as part of the FF/PD negotiations.
I’d also be curious to know how much difference our inflated construction costs would make. I’m almost sure it would be cheaper to build a major project in Korea, but doubt that this would be the case in Japan.
I think crucially it is worth remembering that the stadium itself has never been put out to tender. There is no design, only a concept picture used by the management company. The tendering process would be the only true indicator of what we are actually talking about in terms of cost.

Seoul is a funny city, there is lots of very impressive infra-structure, metro, stadiums, parks, art galleries, stuff you’d expect in a city of 10 million people but impressive because it has happened so quickly and so much was destroyed in the war. On the other hand there is little sign of planning. Most of the city is very homogenous, millions of empty bars, identical shops and cheap low-rise apartment blocks in bad condition. It is fun to visit because virtually everyone is 24 and it is filled with neon, the way the Korean district in NY is, but we shouldn’t feel to bad comparing ourselves to them, they are struggling with similar problems, maybe with more money and bigger challenges, but they seem to be having the same mixture of success and failure.