Superdome Buzzes To Life

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday September 6, 1999

By MALCOLM BROWN

Laser lights and musical thunder, synchronised gymnastics, basketball shots, Icarus characters doing controlled downwards spirals - a spectacular opening for our newest entertainment venue, the Sydney SuperDome at Homebush Bay, which brought the Olympics Minister, Mr Knight, out beaming.

Capable of seating up to 21,000 people in an area covering 60,000 square metres, beneath a curved dome 32 metres high, the SuperDome was thrown open to the public for a walkthrough.

The results were pleasing, an impression helped along by singers from the Campbelltown Performing Arts High School, gymnasts from the Epping YMCA and bandspeople from the Broadmeadow High Marching Koalas.

Set to host the Olympic artistic gymnastics, trampoline events, basketball finals and the Paralympics wheelchair basketball, it will be in full use in the meantime and, it seems, forever after, from concerts to weddings to Rotary conventions, in an area twice the size of the Sydney Entertainment Centre.

Enough concrete to fill 8 1/2 Olympic pools has been poured. The roof is the weight of three Boeing 747s. Its rooftop solar power grid means the centre does not have to rely on conventional power and, as a consequence, will save an estimated 85 tonnes of carbon dioxide by-product a year.

SuperDome general manager Mr Bob Evans, a 55-year-old civil engineer, said the $200 million arena combined the best of Australian and American architecture, and featured design principles similar to those employed by architect Philip Cox with the Sydney Football Stadium.

Under a separate contract arrangement, a $63 million car park with capacity for 3,400 vehicles - the largest in Australia - has been built next door.

The Sydney Kings basketballers, who put in an appearance yesterday, will use the SuperDome as their home court. They will play nine matches there between October 2 and March 11.

Mr John Cassidy, chairman of Abigroup Ltd, which built the centre using a workforce of 3,200, said he would stay for the time being as SuperDome's chief executive to ensure that "everything works".

Abigroup, which has been involved in major projects including the M2 Motorway, the Split Rock Dam in northern NSW and Brisbane's Cultural Centre, will complete the Olympic Tennis Centre by the end of the year. And then the Olympic venue will have been built.

What might happen when the Olympics had come and gone, and all this massive capacity might be under-used?

Not a word of it, said Mr Knight. "The Olympic building program has given Sydney a lot of things we needed but which would have been built over a longer period."