The $775m bid to bring an AFL team to Tasmania will place the state’s symphony orchestra in an unenviable world-first position, which could threaten its future existence.
The plan to build a home for the newly formed Tasmania Devils AFL team will see a 23,000-seat sports and music stadium constructed on a historic Hobart foreshore site just 40 metres from the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra’s purpose-built performing and recording headquarters, the Federation Concert Hall.
The TSO has commissioned two independent acoustic reports in the past 12 months. Both reports, seen by Guardian Australia, warn greater measures will be needed to address the potential for sound spill and reverberation into the concert hall during construction – set to begin next year – and once operating from 2029.
The orchestra’s chief executive, Caroline Sharpen, said there were major inadequately addressed issues in the Macquarie Point multipurpose stadium development application now before the Tasmanian Planning Commission for assessment.
“There’s no precedent in the world that we know of for a concert hall having a 23,000-people stadium 170 metres from its stage,” Sharpen said.
“There are still too many unanswered questions, particularly around noise and vibration and the ability of the existing concert hall to be able to buffer those without impairing any of our performance, recording or filming activities.”
Sharpen said the stadium proposal relied heavily on “management mitigation” – such as coming to an agreement with the AFL over scheduling to avoid a conflict of events – rather than prevention at the source.
“This is problematic because management mitigation needs to be by mutual agreement – and we can’t predict ongoing relations between the AFL and the TSO,” she said.
“We can predict that the AFL won’t negotiate.”
The 75-year-old orchestra performs hundreds of concerts across Tasmania each year, including in its purpose-built home on Hobart’s waterfront.
When not performing, Sharpen said the concert hall was in use seven days and six nights a week for the TSO’s extensive recording, rehearsal, filming and livestream activities, which reach more than 6 million online and radio listeners annually, making it the most recorded, broadcast and streamed orchestra in the country.
According to the stadium’s developer, the Tasmanian government, the stadium is expected to host between 36 and 51 major events each year once operational.
In the past two years the concert hall has undergone a $1.3m acoustic and digital recording upgrade.
Generating $14m a year in revenue, it is considered Tasmania’s No 1 cultural export. But Sharpen said she had not been able to secure meetings with senior ministers to discuss the orchestra’s fate in the face of the AFL juggernaut, and the state arts minister, Madeleine Ogilvie, had only given vague assurances the noise and vibration problems would be “engineered away”.
A state government spokesperson said the planning commission’s assessment would include public consultation with key stakeholders including the TSO. They said Stadiums Tasmania would negotiate event planning with the new stadium’s neighbours.
“We also expect works on site will continue as they have to date, with noise and vibration monitoring and liaison with the TSO to minimise impact on key events,” the spokesperson said.
In a statement, the AFL did not address the concerns raised by the TSO, saying only that the new Tasmania Devils club had signed up more than 200,000 members and the stadium development was continuing to make “great progress”.
As a state-significant project, the stadium’s plans must be approved by both houses of parliament. The Labor opposition has indicated it will support the development.
According to the development application, the Federation Concert Hall is expected to experience levels of sound spill from crowd noise, game sirens, PA systems and live music of between 49 and 75 decibels.
Sharpen said the latest report prepared has warned that low frequency (bass) music sounds emanating from the stadium’s loudspeakers from advertising and entertainment will be the hardest to mitigate.
“These sounds tend to travel through the earth, and the vibration comes through into the concert hall,” she said.
Sharpen stressed that the TSO was supportive of the Tasmania Devils getting a home and she is an AFL fan (her brother Jeremy Sharpen played for Collingwood in the late 1990s) but the orchestra is now joining a growing number of Tasmanians objecting not to having an AFL stadium but to the government’s choice of site.
On Thursday the orchestra will hold a joint announcement with the Tasmanian RSL, which has already voiced its opposition to the location.
The two organisations will announce a 10 November vigil and free concert at Hobart’s cenotaph to protest against the development.
The RSL’s objection centres on the 54-metre high stadium dome which will intrude on the sightlines of the cenotaph, Australia’s oldest war memorial.
The RSL’s chief executive, John Hardy, said the layout of the Hobart memorial had been designed after the first world war to incorporate two significant landmarks – the Derwent River and St George’s Church, where many of those servicemen had been baptised or married.
The render designs provided in the development application by Cox Architecture show the stadium’s dome will become a defining feature of Anzac Day’s dawn ceremonies in Hobart.
The RSL appears to have higher access to government than the TSO, with Hardy saying he had met the premier and the veteran’s affairs minister to lobby for a location change.
“I’ve had [politicians] say, ‘We’d never disrespect the RSL or disrespect the cenotaph’ – but they are because they’re building something right by it,” he said.
The extent of the government’s “clear lack of understanding” of the cenotaph’s significance was evident in the development application, Hardy said. When addressing the sightline issue from the cenotaph, the report states that the view is blocked by vegetation.
The vegetation in question is a towering poplar tree bearing a soldier’s name at its base.
“It’s part of the essence of the cenotaph,” the RSL chief executive said. “The Tasmanian government will be the first Australian parliament to ever reduce, degrade and disrespect its own cenotaph by building around it. No other government has ever done that.”
The Liberal minority government said the premier and veteran affairs minister would continue to consult with the RSL.
“We understand the RSL has concerns and that there are also differing views in the veteran community,” a spokesperson said on Thursday.
The government said there would be viewing areas within the stadium where people could see the cenotaph. But Hardy said a “pay for view” approach to a war memorial was unacceptable.
