Hard News: The truth about "Party Central"
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All very interesting.
Many of you wouldn't know but I spent my childhood in Germany. I, in fact, attended the Heineken kindergarten in Meinz. It was an enlightening experience, especially at nap time, which was about three times a day and was always accompanied by the burping and the farting.
Our Kindergarten supervisor, Herr uber sromburg meiser Key used to turn up for work slightly two dots over the O due top being paid in Heiniken, exclusively, and was a well known party aminall with a propensity for brain farts.
Heineken is a literal translation from ancient Slavic and is meaning Kens Arse, which is were it originally came from and it will be quite an eye opener to see our very own All Blacks wearing their new leiderhosen at the first match in 2011 whilst sucking on a Heineken.
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This is a particularly big issue here in Dunedin where we we've basically been forced to build a replacement for Carisbrook with hundreds of millions of dollars of ratepayer's money
I detected a certain amount of bitterness in the way the data was presented, yes.
if people use public toilets and cemeteries more than rugby stadiums we should spend more on them
One of the differences surely is that cemeteries and toilets don't bring in vistors from the rest of the country or overseas? I mean unless you can somehow get Jim Morrison's corpse transferred to the city.
I'm not saying that it necessarily makes sense or that the numbers aren't ludicrously skewed towards sport. But in Wellington we had the same polemic and in the end I think the Caketin ended up being an asset and not just a place where a private rugby franchise makes its own profit.
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yes but we're not going to get $200m worth of profit from visitors coming to Dunedin for the RWC and even if we did that money would go to hotels and restaurants and bars, not back to the rate payers - local bodies can't raise their own GST to recoup extra cash flow due to something like a stadium those establishments will pay the same rates whether there's a RWC or not - in essence the rate payers are subsidising the RWC by more than $200m without a referendum or anything.
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It's a matter of frustration that the only Dunedin issue that seems to make it onto PAS is the stadium.
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in essence the rate payers are subsidising the RWC by more than $200m without a referendum or anything.
You're not demolishing the stadium after the RWC, are you? The point is that it will still attract domestic and overseas visitors to all blacks games and highlanders games and they will bring money into the city. The money made by bars and such goes into paying their commercial rates which keeps residential rates down.
I'm still not saying you're necessarily going to get a fair return on the money invested or anything like that - just that saying 'we're building a stadium for the world cup' is a little simplistic, even if it wouldn't have been built hadn't it been for the world cup.
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heh - I'm just generally frustrated by the whole thing, we're kind of stuck with the silly stadium at this point, the real problem though now is the resulting debt and I think that's going to be the big issue over the next few weeks as we're looking at double digit rates rises in each of the next 2-3 years
Personally what I'm really worried about is how are we going to raise the billion dollars we need to replace our hundred year old water and sewerage system - it's not sexy like a stadium but it's far more important
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whilst sucking on a Heineken
Lyrically leads me to th clean jungle (being Friday and all)..
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if people use public toilets and cemeteries more than rugby stadiums we should spend more on them
What a pointlessly stupid assertion to make, but one which to this (Auckland) observer kinda sums up the unreasonably miserly mindset of those who opposed the new Dunedin stadium.
Which isn't to say there might not have been good arguments against a stadium, just that the opponents of it seem to me to be a remarkably bitter and small minded bunch.
As for the decline of rugby - my home province is Hawke's Bay, and I see no evidence of this down there in terms of audience, but in participation I detect our now very class riven society rearing its ugly head, with soccer becoming the fashionable amateur sport de jour for Mummies little darlings, and league and rugby being seen increasingly as a career option for the rest.
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how are we going to raise the billion dollars we need to replace our hundred year old water and sewerage system - it's not sexy like a stadium but it's far more important
And public transport, sustainable energy and affordable broadband infrastructure - cos those are what will count in a decade, let alone several. A stadium without the first two is meaningless. Yet the public continue electing dinosaurs whose vision is more jails and cake palaces for the circus.
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Giovanni: the new stadium will be smaller than Carisbrook which seats 30k, the new stadium will have 17k permanent seats and be about 10% smaller than Carisbrook on days when they add temporary bleachers, we will be attracting FEWER visitors to All Black games than we used to - we only get ~5000 to Highlanders games, people really don't come from overseas to see them, that's just marketing, and many of their 'home' games are played elsewhere (Queenstown, Invercargil, Palmerston North).
As I pointed out above the bars pay the same rates no matter how many customers they have
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Mastercard, ANZ, Emirates, Heineken. Toshiba, Brancott Estate
And, given that they’re underwriting the whole thing, I really can’t see the issue with their ads replacing existing ones for 6 weeks.
Are they really more evil than Westpac, Tui, Hanover Finance etc that have tended to dominate grounds over the last few years?
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Giovanni: the new stadium will be smaller than Carisbrook which seats 30k, the new stadium will have 17k permanent seats and be about 10% smaller than Carisbrook on days when they add temporary bleachers, we will be attracting FEWER visitors to All Black games than we used to - we only get ~5000 to Highlanders games, people really don't come from overseas to see them
I think the actual answer - as in the transition between Athletic Park in Wellington and the Cake Tin - is that it's going to bring up to 17k more people than it would have, since Carisbrook in its current state couldn't realistically hope to see the All Blacks for much longer. Small, modern and with attached facilities is where stadiums have gone the world over. And the facilities then get plenty of mixed uses - the Otago University school of medicine, of all things, has a long term lease for part of the Cake Tin.
As I pointed out above the bars pay the same rates no matter how many customers they have
Yes, but they need to have an income. If you're no longer able to bring in visitors from out of town, many of them will close down and your rates will go up.
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Party Central? That was on TV 7 at 9.10 last night wasn't it? Bloody good show!
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Tom: I think there's still a lot of bitterness around town about how the whole stadium thing went down politically, originally it was going to be entirely privately funded, it's just that there was no money forthcoming - to my mind it was a break down in democracy: people marched in the street against it (but not for it), held public meetings, packed out the Town Hall, against it (but not for it), submitted to the council against it at something like 100 to 1 against it, but still the majority of the councilors voted for it, there should have been a referendum.
Now it's turning out that it's costing far more that they said it would ("oh you say we need a scoreboard? and turnstiles? and loos? and kitchens? well of course we didn't include the cost of financing it"), the University jumped in put its weight behind it saying it would be great for several classes in the PhysEd school, but those classes were quietly canceled to cut costs a few months back.
This week we've found out they can't afford the interest on the debt and they're borrowing money to pay it, now there's a financial red flag if ever there was one.
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Yes, but they need to have an income. If you're no longer able to bring in visitors from out of town, many of them will close down and your rates will go up.
Really? Are you seriously arguing that the stadium will pay for itself by bringing in external visitors? Cos it really won't. There are decent reasons to build stadiums, but increasing your rating base is not one.
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Giovanni: if a bar, or a hotel or a restaurant depends on 5 nights a year to make a profit it's already on shaky ground and isn't going to last.
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There are decent reasons to build stadiums, but increasing your rating base is not one.
I'm not saying it will pay for itself, but it's one of those things that a local economy can benefit from. Wellington certainly does with its stadium, which makes the public investment in it that much more rational.
(And again, I'm not saying the new Dunedin stadium will be a good investment, or that the Cake Tin returned as much money to our city as it was touted - just that it's silly to completely leave the induced benefits out, as if they didn't exist.)
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Giovanni: if a bar, or a hotel or a restaurant depends on 5 nights a year to make a profit it's already on shaky ground and isn't going to last.
Are you kidding me? Lots of businesses do depend on key dates on the calendar which are enough to make them profitable. Will you be suggesting to abolish Christmas next?
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Being an indoor stadium gives Dunedin the ability to bid for events that nowhere else will be able to host. Not sure what that would be; boxing? T20 cricket in winter? But something will pop up.
The thing the Dunedin stadium will have going for it is that it’s unique in the country. A bit like the Caketin is unique in being right in the middle of town.
As I’ve said on here before the Caketin broke even for this year by about April.
Most of the revenue came from Rugby sevens, sell-out football matches in an Australian domestic league, a food show, and T20 cricket.
None of those events had been dreamed of when it was commissioned in the 1990s
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proletarian lumps...
if people use public toilets and cemeteries more than rugby stadiums we should spend more on them.
What a pointlessly stupid assertion to make
why? toilets and stadiums are both governed by the same principles - "Bums on seats' :- )
beware false profits...
The money made by bars and such goes into paying their commercial rates which keeps residential rates down.
but those rates will be the same RWC or not, the businesses still have to pay that - no extra gain there...
Fad Gidget...
It's a matter of frustration that the only Dunedin issue that seems to make it onto PAS is the stadium.
I just raised a Dunedin issue with The Press's Go section, so I'll raise it here too...
They have just printed yet another Flying Nun article all about this thing called the Dunedin Sound - while omitting that the first release was Chch's Pin Group and ignoring that only 6 of the bands on the mentioned Tuatara album were from Dunedin, the others from Chch and Auckland, and the Bats should really be listed as a Chch band as only Bob (admittedly the writer) is Dunedin based
- the 80s roster had less Dunedin bands than those from other centres
- This whole Dunedin preoccupation diminshes the contribution of fine bands from Chch, Auckland, Wellington and even Palmerston North...
more correctly the early Flying Nun Lo-Fi sound could be called the Knox/Hood sound (and they were based in Auckland) and if ya wanted to get all birth town on it, well we'd have the esoteric sounding Invercargill / Te Kuiti Sound... -
but those rates will be the same RWC or not, the businesses still have to pay that - no extra gain there...
Again: you need to have businesses afloat in order to have commercial rates at all. I'd suggest a stadium generates more money in the local economy than a cemetery. (And I'm all for the value of services that don't generate money.)
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(And again, I'm not saying the new Dunedin stadium will be a good investment, or that the Cake Tin returned as much money to our city as it was touted - just that it's silly to completely leave the induced benefits out, as if they didn't exist.)
I'm not saying they don't exist but they don't provide benefits to the residents (only 13% of whom went to Carisbrook last year) that match what they're being required to pay. Remember Dunedin is smaller than Wellington, we have 50,000 ratepayers paying for a $200m ($300m including financing) stadium. If it really were the privately funded stadium we were promised I wouldn't have a problem, but it was morphed into this public debt monster against our will.
No one builds a hotel unless they'll have a high enough occupancy rate to pay off the loans - 5 days a year is in the noise compared to what you need to have a viable hotel business - in Dunedin you build it for the perceived year round tourist trade, not for the rugby.
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Mastercard, ANZ, Emirates, Heineken. Toshiba, Brancott Estate...
And, given that they’re underwriting the whole thing, I really can’t see the issue with their ads replacing existing ones for 6 weeks.
Are they really more evil than Westpac, Tui, Hanover Finance etc that have tended to dominate grounds over the last few years?
Well, Hanover Finance sure proved themselves to be pretty evil...
Westpac is a regular finalist in the Roger Awards
and of the new bunch ANZ is a past winner of CAFCA's Roger Award
I thought us taxpayers were doing a fair amount of underwriting/contributing as well ...
where are our ads? -
the Otago University school of medicine, of all things, has a long term lease for part of the Cake Tin.
Wasn't the Otago University School of Medicine, it was schools liaison and promotions and a computer lab and whatnot. And the lease ended a couple of years ago and the offices are now in Revera House, Mulgrave St.
I'm not saying they don't exist but they don't provide benefits to the residents (only 13% of whom went to Carisbrook last year) that match what they're being required to pay.
On this basis I plan to get buried out of Dunedin and demand the portion of my rates that go to cemetaries be refunded.
Being an indoor stadium gives Dunedin the ability to bid for events that nowhere else will be able to host. Not sure what that would be; boxing? T20 cricket in winter? But something will pop up.
Politics between Otago rugby and Otago cricket mean that the new stadium can't hold cricket games. It's a rugby field shape, not more oval like Eden Park, Carisbrook etc. Which I thought was silly - first stadium with a roof in NZ would be ideal location for cricket, guaranteed international games.
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On this basis I plan to get buried out of Dunedin and demand the portion of my rates that go to cemetaries be refunded.
Probably a good idea - the city hiked burial fees by 10% this year to help pay for the stadium debt
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