Obvious solution to the basketball mess

The plan to relocate the basketball stadium means building on a park to pour money into the state treasury.

The state proposes to sell crown land from under Newcastle Basketball at Broadmeadow so high-rise housing can be built there. Then Newcastle council, having looked for an alternative basketball site, proposes to rip up three hectares of park at Lambton.

So the starting position is: we have a basketball site and the parkland.

And the final position will be: we'll have a basketball site and the state will have more money.

It's as bad as flogging parkland directly to get the dosh.

What should be happening, obviously, is purchase by the state of a new basketball site using some of the proceeds from selling the current one. And Blackley and Wallarah ovals at Lambton, where the council proposes to send in the construction crews, should be left just as they are. They should be enjoyed by people playing open-air sport and by the rest of us just looking at green space.

Why has no one seen this solution before?

The only answer I can think of is that Novocastrians are so used to neglect by the state government that they'll cop anything these days.

Actually, this one is worse than usual.

We're quite used to state-government refusal to allocate funds for something we need, the most notorious example being a new Adamstown railway crossing.

But under the stadium plan the money actually flows in reverse: we're being shaken down.

We should worry that the state government may become a little too comfortable with the idea of abolishing parkland in Newcastle to raise funds. If anyone sees NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey running a tape measure over King Edward Park, please let the Herald know immediately.

No, it's not valid to argue that Blackley and Wallarah ovals would each simply be converted from one sporting use to another. That sidesteps the fact that we presently have both the basketball stadium and the ovals.

Second, the fields are precious just as open space.

Parkland in a city hardly ever grows. Instead, there's always pressure to diminish it by building something - maybe a small facility, maybe a big one. The result is more concrete, brick and steel and less greenery.

This tendency must be strictly controlled.

More than anything, it's a long-term issue. Yes, the people who live around the two ovals can reasonably object already to losing the green space. But future generations will need parkland a lot more than they do.

Currently, there are only a few hundred houses within a short stroll of the ovals, because zoning there allows only low-density housing. That will surely change, however, probably sooner rather than later. An eventual tripling of the local population wouldn't be surprising.

More important again will be the needs of people elsewhere in Newcastle as the city densifies. As they move into townhouses and flats, they'll have only small gardens or none at all. They and their kids will use parks much more than we do and may indeed travel a bit to enjoy them.

So preservation of parkland is an even bigger issue than most people think.

Future generations may decide that Blackley and Wallarah ovals would be better used not for sports but as decorative landscaped parks for wandering or picnicking. That will be up to them. Our responsibility is just to preserve the land for them.

Meanwhile, where else can we build a new basketball stadium? The possibilities are just about endless, because the state can expect to get so much money for the current site.

Allowing for zoning bonuses, its 10,000-plus square metres will take buildings up to 40 storeys with more than 500 homes, all next to a railway station. So it must be worth tens of millions of dollars, quite enough to pay for a bigger site somewhere else.

Many people have suggested the old gasworks site at Hamilton North. Privately owned, it's awaiting redevelopment and, because of toxicity under its surface, can't be used for housing.

Since it's one kilometre from Broadmeadow Station, the location would suit a sports facility that people would visit in surges, exhausting car-parking spaces. And if we had the hide to ask the state for a footbridge over the railway, a stadium on the gasworks site could be an easy 600 metre walk from Hamilton Station along Hudson Street. (You can imagine the reaction from a state minister: "A footbridge?! Are you kidding? What do you think you are? A swinging seat?")

Closeness to a station will become a greater advantage in future as Novocastrians increasingly use public transport. As always, we should be planning for the long term.

More immediately, however, people will want to drive to the stadium, and the extra load on the A15 (Griffiths Road) may be unwelcome.

The association that runs the Newcastle Show proposes that a basketball stadium should go where the current entertainment centre is. But that doesn't look like a good idea. The state rightly wants to put more high-rise housing there.

Apart from finding a site, Newcastle Basketball has the problem of lacking funds to build the complete facility it has been planning, because construction costs have risen since it was approved for a $25 million grant in 2019.

Well, there should be enough money in the pot from selling the Broadmeadow site, not only to buy replacement land but to top up the grant and build an excellent new stadium with everything needed for this growing sport.

The current basketball stadium is a shabby disgrace. If Newcastle got its fair share of attention from the state, we'd have had a new and better one long ago.

Now the time has come, and the state cannot pretend that the money isn't available.