Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs Normal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text sizeA multinational architecture firm has sought to get Brisbane’s stadium debate back on track with an ambitious proposal to unlock a major inner-city industrial site and turn it into the city’s own Olympic park.To deliver the vision, Queensland Rail’s Mayne Yard would have to be moved out of the inner-city. To put the scale of the site in context, the 36-hectare stabling yard for QR rolling stock takes up about 21 per cent of Bowen Hills.Multinational architecture firm Wilkinson Eyre submitted the concept for the Mayne Yards to last year’s Quirk review, and plans to do so again to the Crisafulli government’s new 100-day review.Wilkinson Eyre Australian studio lead Stuart Dow said the “back of an envelope” concept came from the same holistic approach the firm applied to the 2012 London and 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games, using the Olympics to promote “city-shaping transformations”.Wilkinson Eyre Australian lead Stuart Dow.Credit: Steven Siewert“Really, all you need to do is move that rail yard, which is costly and complicated, but it isn’t unachievable,” he said.“It’s a generational change, but one that would generate an incredible benefit in value capture, in beautification, in any ecological benefits in this, that and the other, and then you don’t impact anything else.“It ticks a lot of boxes in that respect.”As for the cost, Dow said it that could only be determined after substantial investigation and planning.“We just need to allow these things to organically evolve and become what the people want,” he said.“It needs to be driven by a business plan, and it needs to be logical. By the same token, you can’t sit there and just throw a dart at numbers.”The concept includes a 60,000-seat stadium at the southern end of the site, loosely modelled on Perth’s Optus Stadium, near the “spaghetti junction” confluence of arterial roads.Beneath the junction would be a warm-up track, close to the main stadium.A lack of space for an adjacent warm-up track for the Gabba resulted in one of the more contentious aspects of the proposal to rebuild the stadium for the Olympics – the use of the 500-metre-distant Raymond Park.Concept plan for Brisbane Olympic Park, on the Mayne Yards.Credit: Wilkinson EyreBy having a track in the shadows of the spaghetti junction, Dow said otherwise unused land could be given a public use.“We just looked at what you could do underneath all the road networks and thought ‘that would be fun, wouldn’t it?’,” he said.“If you could actually utilise them, similar to what they’ve done down in Melbourne with the rail crossing removal – elevated viaducts and basketball courts, play equipment and parkland underneath – it was something just to provoke a thought.”A little further north would be an indoor stadium, which could be demountable for the Games or a more permanent facility, should the Brisbane Arena not go ahead at Roma Street as planned.“Nobody is sold completely on the Roma Street [Brisbane Arena] scheme, whether it’s on top of Roma Street station or whether it’s adjacent somewhere north, south, east or west,” he said.“We are saying that this could be a fantastic legacy opportunity, whether it’s temporary or permanent.“If it was a permanent solution, then you could easily see, without any detrimental impact to the wider urban realm, building two venues there that would not just anchor, but truly provide this area with a bit more gravitas.“Such as what you see in Sydney with the indoor arena next to the Olympic Stadium out at Homebush, or Rod Laver Arena next to the MCG in Melbourne.”Queensland Rail’s Mayne Yards facility at Bowen Hills.Credit: Google EarthA new Breakfast Creek train station would be built, connecting with both existing and future Cross River Rail lines, and would include a bridge over the creek for access to Albion.An “Olympic Walk” would provide pedestrian connectivity across Enoggera Creek to the west of the site, utilising existing rail bridges. The Ferny Grove line would be unaffected, Dow said.Rounding it out would be space for residential development at the north of the site, which could extend towards the stadium post-Games.The stumbling block to the vision, of course, was the vital ongoing public need for Queensland Rail’s stabling yards.Under Wilkinson Eyre’s proposal, they would be moved out near Brisbane Airport.“The fact that the seaport and the airport are already out there, it would make great sense to have the major stabling yards for heavy rail and the new Cross River Rail located adjacent,” Dow said.“It still puts it within pretty reasonable proximity to the city, but it centralises all of that essential infrastructure the city needs to function and then immediately alleviates quite an impressive peninsula that could be reinvigorated.”Such a move would be costly, logistically challenging and possibly unrealistic given the timeframes. After all, what started as an 11-year lead-in to the 2032 Games is now just 7½ years.But what about building above the operational stabling yards, as New York did for its $US25 billion Hudson Yards development?Dow said while that outcome would be perfect for Brisbane, it was probably a bridge too far.Hudson Yards was built above rail stabling yards in New York City.Credit: C. Taylor Crothers/Getty Images“It’s a highly cost-prohibitive exercise, and really it takes a significantly dense city or urban area to be able to overcome the financial implications of undertaking such enormous intervention, which is maintaining rail lines and rolling stock underneath a big deck, and then to build on top of it,” he said.“There are some times where you’ve got to think to yourself, no matter how impressive we are and how much we punch above our weight, you’re not going to be able to do these things in a feasible fashion.”Arcadis Brisbane Games and legacy lead Paul Allan said an above-rail construction a great idea, but agreed it would be too cost-prohibitive.Allan cited the original plans for the Brisbane Arena, which would have been built above the rail lines at Roma Street. Last year’s Quirk review found an arena at that site, budgeted at $2.5 billion, would likely cost in excess of $4 billion.The concourse of the proposed stadium at the Mayne Yard Queensland Rail stabling yards. Credit: Wilkinson Eyre“To put a proper full-size stadium would be, I’d say, two or three times bigger than that,” Allan said.“It might not have the station issues that Roma Street had – it’s a stabling yard more so than a station, so you don’t have the people accessibility they require [for] Roma Street.“But I would be guessing in the many billions to just build what would be considered a ground level to then start your structures on.”One fan of the proposal, however, was former premier and lord mayor Campbell Newman.In objecting to a new stadium being built on green space at Victoria Park, Newman suggested three alternatives – the Gabba, Hamilton Northshore and Mayne Yards.As mentioned, Mayne would require the relocation of the stabling yards, or a huge platform to be built above them – neither of which Newman considered an insurmountable problem.“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” he said.“Do we really want the core of the city to have, in this day and age, this vast area of quasi-industrial activity?“Why shouldn’t it be transformed? There’s plenty of room for a stadium, there’s plenty of room for other infrastructure, and there’s plenty of room for a whole lot of urban renewal – new apartment blocks and things like that that can help offset some of the costs.”In his review submission, Newman said Victoria Park had been “salami sliced away for a variety of well-intentioned projects” over the years, including his own Legacy Way tunnel.“I’m just saying hands off Vic Park, go and find an alternative – it’s as simple as that,” he said.“And I think a big win is to actually say we’re going to have a transformational project, which would see the rail relocated.“It’s a very expensive piece of real estate being used, I would assert, not very efficiently by the railway.”
