No-one I have spoken to is against the Grandstands at Unley Oval being upgraded, particularly the McKay stand.

This has been given the green light to proceed to detailed design and formal costings after last nights Marathon sitting of Council. But we have gone much further.

In already recognizing from investigations (resulting from my motion on Unley Oval I think last October) that we cannot comply with the AFL preferred guidelines for facility accommodation for a State based Competition in just the McKay stand we have taken advantage of the need to consider work in the Oatey Stand as well.

The McKay Stand can only accommodate the home team requirements under the AFL guidelines. The Away team therefore needs to be accommodated in the Oatey Stand.

Last nights motion now allows our administration to now proceed to preparing detailed designs and to have these formally costed. They can then provide us (once again as with the items blogged on earlier today) with something concrete to consider.

What we have done however with last night’s motion is to provide ourselves with an opportunity to reduce the financial impact of proceeding if we ever get to that point by extension the design process to cover as well the provision of additional community facilities in the Oatey Grandstand.

How is this you ask? Because by extending the project to the wider community we improve our chances of grant funding to cover all the work. And that surely is a no brainer.

And because this extends the scope beyond internal upgrades the public gets to contribute which is surely a good thing.

And for those who are acutely aware that this ground has probably the worst facilities for persons with disabilities I will be keeping a close watch on the design work to ensue that this is addressed.