Trust opens its doors to the community

THE Kardinia Park Trust is keen to see the stadium become a well-used community asset, but also has its eye on bigger and better things.

Created by the state government in 2016, the trust was established to administer, promote and manage the park’s land with the overall objective of contributing to the economic, community and liveability benefits to Geelong coming from the use of GMHBA Stadium.

Trust chief executive officer Michael Brown said the trust’s role in looking after the stadium was “no different to the MCG, but on a much smaller scale”.

“The Cats (the stadium’s major tenant) are brilliant and do what they do, but our role after their seven or eight days in terms of match play a year is to attract other events – commercial, local – to make the stadium viable.

“A real focus for the trust is becoming a better part of the Geelong community.”

He said the trust had secured fixtures such as the Matildas vs China game later this month, the Big Bash League/Women’s Big Bash League double header, and the Melbourne Victory vs Central Coast Mariners A-League game, but non-sports events such as the 2017 Carols by Candlelight – which the trust agreed to host earlier this month – were just as important.

“It’ll be a really great night, and more of those things are important to us.

“We call it ‘Australia’s best regional stadium’, and that’s what we want to be known as.

“We’ve got a $280 million asset, how can we get more community use out of it?”

The trust is advocating for the completion of the stadium’s stage five expansion, and Mr Brown said this would help argue the case to host major concerts.

“It’s all about being ahead of the development, when it comes.

“Long-term strategy for us, I’d love to see Robbie Williams or Adele at Kardinia Park. “You’ve got to crawl before you can walk, but long-term, we want to be the regional version of the MCG.”