Newtown Park

I read that Rob Morrison has mentioned developing Newtown Park. Does this mean Welnix are contemplating turning it into a venue for the Phoenix? What you need is a 12,000 seat purpose built football stadium where your home crowds aren't lost in a sea of empty yellow seats. Westpac could be used for big games like play-offs.

I read it as facilities- Nix boys train on Newtown two above the park itself. Doing up the facilities would be beneficial. Help us to keep talented youngsters who demand high quality facilities. etc.

But you're spot on- something with 20,000 would be ideal. 20,000 is aspirational- 12,000 would be exceeded if we went on a good run/ran a good deal.

Any smaller stadium would need to have the same ease of access the RoF provides. I can't see one ever being built tho.

Where is that post of the awesome redesign of the basin?

make. it. happen.

Just redesign the stadium so that it is two tiered (as well as rectangular and covered)  but roughly the same size, close the top tier for HAL games and can have some sort of display across the top tier to hide the empty seats like seattle sounders have at their home games:

It's monkeyfish again! 

The beauty with the stadium is that it is by the train station, it's easily accessible.  it would be much harder to get people to Newtown park.   

double decker stadium. Free roof for the ROF, 18,000 seater on top.

The stadium really is rubbish with less than about 12,000 in it. IMO they still open too much of it and should only open it to the halfway line on both sides at the most.

Out of interest, how many times have they sold more than 15k tickets to any cricket match? 

For mine, it would have been better to install flood lights at the basin, rather than make the stadium duel purpose.  Mind you, when they conceived the idea of the stadium they probably had no idea that 7 years later there would be regular football.  Wouldn't be too hard to turn the inside rectangular would it? lol

We would have missed out on AFL 2013 though!

Was a lady at the stadium handing out "stop the flyover, save the basin" stickers on Friday. 

"Occupy the Basin"

Did just consider the fact that both play in summer. Not ideal. 

 You're probably right. Related links ...

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/4347674/Rusty-Wellington-stadium-under-repair

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/5338600/Stadium-repairs-finished-in-time-for-world-cup

Somewhere in the middle paulm. I have to be careful what I say here but they settled out of court which leads me to believe the responsibility was shared. The last thing I'll say is that the person responsible for following (or not) that maintenance plan is no longer at WS.

While we're on the subject of cladding, I'm not sure the image in that article is what is actually happening, rather just a concept. There were a number of concepts tabled, some incredibly expensive (the one in the image possibly the most exspensive) and the cheapest was to just fix what we have. So I think that's what they went with.

 I've seen all the plans for the redevelopments but it was quite awhile ago. I know they are going to be putting in a lot of glass on the harbour side to make the most of the views of the city. From memory some mezzanine floors around the concourse and some bars/standing areas up the back behind the last row of yellow seats were also on the plans - these ideas were based on making the most of wasted space in the stadium. At the moment they're refurbishing all the offices and upgrading the changing rooms - including a massive new home changing rooms which will be pimped out - away changing rooms stock standard.

The new stadium signs were [no doubt] a debacle. Probably could have just put it up after the world cup but I imagine the naming rights sponsor wanted it up and didn't blink at the costs of all the up-downs.

^ definitely all makes sense Topleft

I too was being careful with what I said so as not to implicate my source, sounds like some very bad blood went down there.

Love the sound of the new developments. Particularly making the most of views, the stadium is in a great spot for that. I've long wanted improvements to the concourse as well, just a huge boring space up until now. Can't wait to see how it all turns out. 

There is quite a bit of upgrading happening/going to happen at Westpac, changing rooms at present, upgrading and adding a new change room, Delloitts Lounge is next. A lot of this was published in a Dompost article earlier this year. It may have come out with the Trust end of year report. I think the all up spend is about 25million and works are to be complete by 2015 when the cricket World Cup is co shared with NZ/Australia. Theres probably some clever person out there who can supply some links.