Myth: A New Stadium Would Only Take Up a Small Part of the Park

A common misconception is that a stadium would occupy only a small portion of Victoria Park / Barrambin. For example, the Quirk Report claimed that a stadium would take up only 12-13% of the park. However, statements like this are misleading, and here’s why -

1. Required Infrastructure Beyond the Stadium Footprint

The Quirk Report itself acknowledged that the 12-13% figure excluded essential stadium-related infrastructure such as roads, service corridors, and connections. It also omitted the warm-up track required by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for Olympic stadiums.

In addition, significant additional space would be required to meet access needs for disabled users, which would be amplified during the Paralympics. Specialist bus facilities, drop-off zones, turnaround areas, and new road systems connecting to the Inner City Bypass (ICB) would further encroach on the park. The presence of major constraints like the ICB, railway alignment, and the Inner Northern Busway means these works would inevitably target large portions of the park for resumptions and excessive infrastructure.

The IOC’s stringent requirements for Olympic venues also mean significant infrastructure beyond the stadium. For instance, an architect who worked on the London Olympic masterplan highlighted the scale of these demands -

“You’ve got to be able to get to every single back-of-house place in the Olympic park within 20 minutes in an anticlockwise direction on a service road. Is that even possible?”

The result for London was “big, wide roads - and lots of them - that slice through the park to this day, making it still feel like an events campus rather than a normal part of London.” A former Olympic design director even admitted -

“I still wince at some of the infrastructure.” (The Guardian)

This example highlights how underestimated infrastructure requirements can drastically alter a park’s character and usability.

2. Comparison to Perth’s Optus Stadium

We can look to Perth's Optus Stadium (60,000 seats) for a rough comparison of the space that a stadium would take up in Victoria Park. A Brisbane-based town planner created the below image to visually illustrate how much of the park would be taken up by a stadium. You can see that the vast majority of Victoria Park (as outlined in the 3rd image below) would be taken up by a stadium and associated infrastructure. Note that this mock up does not include the required Olympic warm up track and some of the additional Olympics access infrastructure which would be required at the Victoria Park location (so the actual space required by a stadium would be even more than what is outlined below).