Stadium closes doors on its 20th birthday
Twenty years to the day that Stadium Southland opened, it has been forced to close it’s doors – albeit temporally.
On March 25, 2000, at a glitzy event in Invercargill, then New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark opened what was an originally a seven court facility at Surrey Park.
To mark the 20-year milestone since Clark cut the ribbon, Stadium Southland staff met yesterday for a small birthday celebration.
But more importantly, they were there to prepare to close the doors to the venue for at least the next four weeks, as New Zealand goes into lockdown in an attempt to halt the spread of coronavirus.
‘‘It’s a surreal feeling as ILT Stadium Southland closes its doors on the very day it was to commence its year-long 2020 birthday celebrations, ‘‘ Stadium Southland general manager Nigel Skelt said.
The stadium was set to launch a ‘‘three cheers for 20 years’’ promotion yesterday where they planned to roll out a host of community events over the next 12 months to mark the occasion. That will now be put on hold.
‘‘It might be three cheers for 21 years,’’ Skelt said.
About 80 current and former staff were also scheduled to get together this weekend for a reunion, but that has now been canned.
Yesterday’s closure is not the first major challenge the stadium has faced in its 20 years. Soon after celebrating its 10th birthday in 2010 the roof collapsed under a heavy dumping of snow.
‘‘It seems we are working in 10 year cycle.’’
All its operations were shifted to the SIT Velodrome before the stadium was re-opened by then Prime Minister John Key on May 9, 2014, at a cost of $42 million.
Skelt said it has been an incredible 20-year rollercoaster journey. ‘‘It has been a little bit like rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic at times,’’ he joked. ‘‘However as a team, and as a community, Southland is always at our best at these times. We are incredibly resilient and resourceful.’’
Given the venue’s income had now dried up on the back of the closure, like many it has added to the financial strain for Stadium Southland management.
Skelt said they had broken it down into four-week blocks and would continue to reassess the financial situation throughout.
Through the support of the Government’s wage subsidy, and a decision to help at board level, they would at this stage be able to keep all of its staff employed during the closure.
While the doors were now closed, Skelt said they would continue to work with the Southern Steel and Southland Sharks franchises, and event and sports promoters, to ensure that there would be plenty of sporting and community events at some point.
‘‘It might be three cheers for 21 years.’’ Nigel Skelt, Stadium Southland general manager