Belconnen Basketball Stadium expansion

The Canberra Times

WATCH: Basketball ACT and the ACT government will work together on expanding the Belconnen Stadium to include three extra indoor courts on a vacant block next door to the current stadium. It has now gone out to tender.

Transcript

00:00Just a dusty gravel car park, but it will transform into a multi-million dollar basketball stadium.

00:11After a 13 year wait, Basketball ACT CEO Nicole Bowles could be excused for thinking it would never happen.

00:21You never say never, because you're always striving towards making sure that you can leave the game in a better place than what you came into it.

00:28So we're really excited to be able to do that and work with the ACT Government on what these three new courts can mean for us.

00:36A partnership with the ACT Government has changed all that.

00:41Yeah, so we've signed a Head of Agreement with the ACT Government to go in together with this project.

00:47So the Government are leading the project and the tender for the build.

00:50So we're very excited to have that partnership and what it means for us to deliver the courts for the community.

00:57With the process now out to tender, how long before it will be filled with the sounds of basketball?

01:06I'm working on a realistic time frame of probably about five years for us to be able to open them.

01:12But once we get through this tender phase, we'll be able to talk more realistic timelines.

01:18An earlier report put the potential cost of three enclosed courts with a show court at $21 million.

01:27But how much will it cost now?

01:30Well, that's the million dollar question, isn't it, in terms of what's the cost going to be?

01:34We previously did some work presenting some cost models to the Government.

01:38But we know with all things in life, those cost models have changed.

01:43I don't dare put a figure on it at this point in time.

01:46We are at a really critical stage where we can look to what finalised design looks like.

01:52And then from there, we'll be able to sort of talk what dollars and cents go into it.

01:56And what will it be used for?

01:58Could we see Canberra Capitals games there in the future?

02:03Some of their pre-season games, yes.

02:05But no, I'd like to think that the Caps can continue packing out the AIS Arena

02:10and our stadium will be absolutely too small to hold them.

02:13But we are very interested to get things like our national championships here to Canberra

02:18and some international games such as, you know, underage championships.

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