Alright, so I went to the supporter forum. Apart from a 40 minute long derailing of the meeting to talk about food, it was reasonably useful to ascertain information about the new stadium. Some steam of consciousness thoughts based on my scribbled notes:
The meeting was held by the Price Waterhouse Cooper group who are writing the design brief due by end feb.
•The new stadium is planned to be built between October 2016 & April 2019, which is the end of the next NRL season, and the start of the 2019 one. It is approximately 950 days or 2 years and 6 months.
•The Government appears to have "fixed" the capacity at 30,000 with 3,000 of those being corporate seats.
•It will be a 'multi-use' venue, with League, Football, Union as well as other community events and concerts being planned for.
•It will not be a 'club home' supposedly, I imagine if the Eels continue to win upgrades to their North Parramatta facilities, this may actually happen.
•Despite not being a 'club home', it will still be a 'home venue' for WSW & Eels.
•The idea exists for a PCYC building to be there, although it sounds like a wishy washy concept that sounds good, but will not make it past the beancounters and designers into the final stadium.
•I would say a certainty not to have a full covered roof. It will probably be at best a roof that covers the spectators for 'normal' rain, but no sliding or semi-retractable roof to cover the pitch.
•A new 50k to 55k stadium at Moore Park looks like it will go ahead in the future, and was specifically not mentioned as a "redevelopment" of the existing SFS. Note that lobbying has already taken place by the likes of the smurfs, to have the new stadium built alongside the old SFS, with the SFS being demolished after.
•ANZ is getting a 'redevelopment'.
•The limitation of 30k looks to be a financial decision at this stage, the reason given being an additional 5k worth of seating plus the facilities costing a lot of extra money.
•Expansion can be built into a stadium, but costs the stadium seating and space, with the footprint required for the expanded capacity taking up space that could be used for seating in a non-expandable facility.
•There was a mention of the Govt's plan being for "blockbusters" to be moved to ANZ or the new Moore Park, or in the very long term, the 4th major Sydney stadium (in Western Sydney somewhere).
•Safe standing was discussed, Eels fans (and the club) are deadset against it (the fans less so, mostly because they don't care).
•Stadium will be flip seating.
•The PWC people asked us if we wanted to see a view of Parramatta Park. To which I said "no-one cares" and that was the answer from everyone else.
•The start had a derailment of about 30 minutes talking about food.
•The "Green Guide" was repeatedly mentioned regarding the design of the stadium, it looks like the Govt have said nothing can be outside what the Green Guide states, specifically seating rake, and the depth of space for each seat to the next one.
•I mentioned that having a 30k stadium will create the same issue that Victory have, with limited tickets to the general public & limiting memberships.
•Eels fans don't know the difference between their club memberships, their season tickets, and the Wanderers "members" being season ticket holders.
•They get very defensive when you mention that the Wanderers are the reason the stadium is being rebuilt, or that the Wanderers will be the main tenants.
•There were comments about the rake of the RBB section, I mentioned the Dortmund Yellow Wall and the PWC people actually knew what I was talking about.
•The Police had their own meeting with PWC that day, and there was a discussion at the end about the police presence. Unsurprisingly, the Eels fans don't care while Wanderers fans don't want in your face policing.
