Kieren Perkins has swatted away renewed calls to give land back to the ACT government to help fund a new stadium in Civic, declaring: "I'm not going to give away the farm to make someone else rich".
Perkins, the Australian Sports Commission and AIS boss, has met with ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr to discuss the future of Canberra Stadium and the possibility of redeveloping the ageing facility.
But there's a new push to put Civic back on Barr's stadium location agenda, which floats the prospect of reclaiming land at the AIS precinct and redeveloping it to ease housing pressure in Canberra.
The plan relies on the federal government carving off land at the AIS - including the area surrounding the stadium, car parks and the closed AIS Arena - and giving it back to the ACT at no cost.
The Commonwealth owns the land at the AIS, which was zoned for sports use when the ACT entered self government. The sports commission - a federal government agency - occupies the land but does not own it.
Perkins has a vision to reinvigorate the AIS campus with better accommodation for athletes and air domes to make rectangular fields all-weather venues, but it requires federal funding and he wants to retain land even though the ACT leases the stadium.
"I see the for and against with the stadium [location] argument," Perkins said.
"But what I am 100 per cent certain of is that there is no commercial outcome that sees us giving away, or selling, the land here.
"Any investment opportunity [at the AIS site] has at least a 20-year cycle on it, and the only people that make money out of that will be developers.
"... I'm not in the business of charity. I'm not going to give away the farm to make someone else rich, which at the moment, every proposal I've seen come over my desk or in the newspaper ... developers get rich."
Perkins hopes to secure funding in the next federal budget to upgrade the AIS facilities, including "air supported structures" to act as a bubble above rectangular fields and athletics tracks.
It's understood Slovenian-based company Duol has been contacted about the structure they built for English soccer team Watford in the hope it could be used over an existing FIFA five-star pitch and a new multipurpose facility on vacant land near Ginninderra Drive.
"The rest of the world has been building these for 30 years, but we've just been sitting and watching," Perkins said of the need to upgrade the AIS.
Improvements to the stadium and arena, however, will not feature in the AIS masterplan. The arena will reopen in 2024 after being closed for four years, while the ACT government has been investing in ongoing maintenance at the stadium.
Barr said the idea of building a stadium on the site of the Civic pool had become too costly and complicated to pursue, nominating a Canberra Stadium refurbishment as his preference and Exhibition Park as a secondary option.
But he has never completely ruled out the city, and a push from hospitality, business, tourism and sporting leaders has given Barr options for a cost-effective way to deliver the project.
A spokesperson for the committee driving the Civic stadium revival said: "We support Kieren's objective of a vibrant sports commission and a vibrant AIS. That's exactly what he should be doing after an under-funding of services available to him over two decades.
"From the outset we have made it clear that the land issue is a matter to be resolved between the ACT government and the federal government and not an administrator whose agenda may not necessarily align with the ACT tax payers."
The ACT government pays $350,000 per year to lease Canberra Stadium from the sports commission - a federal government agency. The lease expires at the end of next year.
Irrespective of the government's new stadium decision, the Raiders and Brumbies will need to use Canberra Stadium for at least the next 10 years.
"If the Canberra community needs a brand new stadium that's not in Bruce, then what we do here over the next 10 years to enable football codes to keep competing is a different answer to the one if [the government] wants to redevelop Bruce," Perkins said.
"... We're seeing these bullish predictions of what [the AIS land is] all worth. They're just wrong. They're flat-out wrong. I'm happy to talk to anyone who's got an idea, but from what we've seen so far it would be giving away land forever for three or four months of gain."
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