Govt: Cut stadium cost by 40%

2006-08-30 22:01

Theuns van der Westhuizen

Cape Town - The design of the new Green Point Stadium is being reviewed after the national treasury asked that the cost of the stadium be slashed by 40% from the estimated R3.3bn.

The new design for the 2010 Soccer World Cup tournament will be submitted to the treasury with the Cape Town city council's final business plan at the end of October.

Mayor Helen Zille said the council's preparations for 2010 were on track.

She said the council had handed a provisional business plan to the treasury.

It comprised 37 pages about 16 different aspects of preparations for the tournament.

It was the start of an inter-active process between the council and the treasury so that a final plan could be decided on which would be acceptable, affordable and attainable.

Zille said it would not be easy to cut the cost of the stadium by 40%, because the costing of the concept design was done extremely accurately and appraised by independent experts.

Council paying R400m

The council was reviewing certain aspects of the concept design to establish where costs could be cut to about R2bn.

The present R3.3bn included additional facilities at the stadium, but did not include additional infrastructure development.

Zille repeated that the council could contribute only R400m to the cost of the stadium. This did not include support services such as traffic, safety and cleaning facilities before, during and after the tournament.

The total cost of the tournament, which included about 20 public viewing sites for soccer fans, infrastructure, training facilities, transport, information, communication and telecommunication, would be just more than R7bn.

Zille said the council had undertaken to provide about R1.2bn - R400m of that amount earmarked for the stadium.

This meant the council still had to get about R800m, probably through sponsorships, for the public viewing sites that Fifa would not control. These sites would be situated throughout the metropole.

Building starts early next year

The next step was to hand the council's final business plan to the treasury on October 31.

The treasury would say early in November how much money would be earmarked for the Cape metropole for the tournament. Building would start "very early next year".

Zille repeated that the stadium would be built in Green Point if enough funding was obtained from the national government.

The Culemborg site was revisited a while ago, but Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin said it wasn't available.

Transnet was going to move some harbour facilities to the site to expand its container depot.

Research showed that the new stadium could result in positive income virtually every year after 2010 if the council received enough funding and wasn't left with debt on capital expenditure.

Zille said she was going to appoint a business advisory panel soon to help the council from a business perspective with preparations for 2010.

Zille said: "I believe Cape Town has the potential to become one of the main drawcards for the World Cup tournament."

- Die Burger