It is an idea that no doubt would be greeted by many people, at first, with horror.
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Albury’s Lauren Jackson Sports Centre is such a crucial community facility, used by thousands and thousands of people every year.
Go down to the stadium on an afternoon after school and you’ll often find junior basketball competitions in full swing.
Of course, the Border Bandits bring the excitement of the higher levels of the sport when they play their home games at Lauren Jackson.
In such ways, Albury is really no different from any other regional centre right across Australia.
And that is, sport is extremely important to the community’s fabric – and the Lauren Jackson Sports Centre plays a vital role in ensuring so much of that can take place. We simply could not be without the facility.
The comments from Albury councillor Graham Docksey might then strike a degree of concern in the community.
Put very simply, Cr Docksey reckons the stadium should be “bulldozed”. A better site he suggests would be the nearby showgrounds site.
The first point that probably needs to be made though is that this is something that, quite obviously, is not going to be done on anything resembling a whim.
Firstly, to build a new stadium designed to meet the city’s needs in the decades ahead would be a project costing in the many millions of dollars.
Councils such as Albury do what they can to contribute to such projects, but are mindful of keeping the budget in the black and not putting a financial burden on residents and ratepayers. And so such spending is kept to a minimum.
Rather it is the possibility of getting federal or state funding, or both, that is the driver of these projects.
As we’ve seen in many instances, that is becoming harder and harder to achieve.
The project to build MAMA was such an example – the council had to contribute when it became clear the NSW government would not match the Commonwealth.
As for the stadium, yes, it is looking tired and is probably not going to meet the community’s needs for too many more years.
What makes Cr Docksey’s comments worth being given serious consideration is for the council to at least begin planning for the stadium eventually getting past its use-by-date.
