Maze Stadium “Doesn’t Stack Up”
Despite revelations that Edwin Poots’s Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure has spent nearly £3.5 million on promoting a new stadium in his back yard, the press are hinting that the white elephant is edging ever-nearer to it’s ultimate demise after the DCAL Permanent Secretary Paul Sweeney refused to endorse the plans.
According to the Sunday Life, “The absence of support from key civil servants in the departments principally involved in the project … is likely to put the final nail in its coffin.”
Finance Minister Peter Robinson is due to make a recommendation to the Executive before he takes over the position of First Minister later this month, however he has recently hinted that the Maze could be redeveloped through other means that wouldn’t require the construction of a national stadium, suggesting he may already have a decision in mind.
The paper also pointed out that senior civil servants had confirmed that adding the extra 8,500 seats, which would only be used once a year but were considered necessary to make GAA’s involvement worth their while, had doubled the estimated costs of the Maze plans at the same time as helping to alienate rugby and football fans worried about the impact a half-to-three-quarters-empty stadium would have on the atmosphere.
“To spend at least double the revenue just to insert an extra 8,500 seats in the plan doesn’t make financial sense. Even a 30,000 seater stadium raises the essential question of what it is going to be used for and how often it is going to be used.
Ulster rugby has indicated plans to refurbish Ravenhill. Is it going to do that and then leave it unused to play at the Maze? The 38,500 seater stadium isn’t economically viable and there are major financial questions about building a 30,000 stadium there.
Overall the Maze Stadium proposal doesn’t stack up economically and without it the original business plan for the redevelopment of the site isn’t viable either,”
Sunday Life, quoting a “senior civil servant”