Horsham close to stadium decision
Horsham civic leaders will decide on a site for a proposed new multi-use indoor sports stadium in ‘coming weeks’.
A sporting community project group has assessed 446 survey responses to a shortlist of three site options as well as strong suggestions to consider other locations.
Of responses to the three options, a site next to Horsham Basketball Stadium at Horsham Showground attracted the most support, with a Mill Street site along a railway corridor coming second.
The third most popular site on the survey was ‘unsure-other suggestions’ where many proponents declared support for a concept to expand the stadium project into a sporting precinct at Horsham College.
A site on the eastern edge of Horsham Showground was also on the shortlist.
Horsham Rural City Council contracted William Ross Architects and Community Vibe in March to help the project group, representing 16 sporting organisations, to work through the project.
The group established a vision that the ‘Horsham multi-use sports stadium shall serve as a regional facility that will support and foster increased participation in sport and recreation, and community activities into the future’.
The group comprises representatives of Horsham Amateur Basketball Association, Netball Victoria, Horsham badminton, squash, volleyball and table tennis clubs, Horsham Rural City Council, Sport and Recreation Victoria, Wimmera Regional Sports Assembly and community members.
This group initially assessed 11 potential sites against a range of criteria before presenting the shortlist and sending the survey to 100 sporting clubs, 13 schools, five health organisations, six state sporting bodies and all members of the council’s sports and recreation advisory committees.
The project group examined each site against criteria that included: Urban design and locality; existing assets, site condition and capacity; financial and time impacts; and strategic and legislative considerations.
Cr Mark Radford said as well as a consultation process the project group had additional meetings to work through all the comments.
“The project group has endorsed a report on the community engagement and encourages anyone interested to read through the feedback received,” he said.
Cr Radford said the group had assessed Horsham College as a potential site.
“Horsham College did not make the shortlist of the top three ranked sites for further public consultation,” he said.
“But because results showed a large proportion of interest in this site, a delegation supporting this alternative was invited to present their views to the project group.”
Project group member and Horsham Table Tennis Association president Jeff Pekin said the group had met six times and members had worked on issues surrounding the proposed stadium, at and away from meetings.
“We have reviewed information presented by the architect on aspects of 11 sites, and after shortlisting to three, we have gained the community’s views on the merit of these sites. For the shortlisted sites we have also started to look at how a new facility would fit on each site,” he said.
A copy of the community engagement report is available on council’s website at www.hrcc.vic.gov.au/images/sports_stadium_community_engagement_report.pdf.