An artist’s impression of the all-weather, climate-controlled, accessible sports dome. Images: ASC.
The Australian Sports Commission has unveiled details of proposals to revitalise the ageing Australian Institute of Sport campus in Bruce ahead of the 2032 Brisbane Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Its Revitalisation Project proposes an inflatable multi-sports dome, multi-storey athlete accommodation block and high-performance training and testing centre.
The 2024-25 Federal Budget Government allocated $250 million over three years to deliver the facilities, recommended by the 2024 Independent Review of the AIS Infrastructure, at the AIS campus.
The Australian Sports Commission has revealed details of the AIS project in its submission to the parliamentary Public Works Committee.
It says the project aims to ensure the AIS campus, which has not been upgraded in 40 years, remains a world-class facility for the Brisbane Games and beyond.
The three new facilities are to be strategically sited near each other at the northern end of the campus.
What the new athletes’ accommodation block will look like. The top floor is expected to have rooms for high-altitude training.
The sports dome will be an all-weather, fully para-accessible, climate-controlled multi-disciplinary indoor training, testing and analysis space.
It will have an inflatable fabric roof and include a modified athletics track around a large sports pitch suitable for flag-football, lacrosse, softball, baseball, hockey, football, rugby union and rugby league training.
An ancillary building attached to the fabric-roofed structure will incorporate airlocks, changerooms, lab/analysis space as well as equipment storage.
The 200-bed, multi-storey accommodation building will be located adjacent to the existing Residence of Champions with its communal dining areas and kitchen.
It will provide para-accessible individual suites or team accommodation with interconnecting rooms to support groups and caring requirements.
The top floor is expected to be able to be converted into altitude rooms to enable ‘live high, train low’ training.
The High Performance Testing and Support Centre will replace ageing testing and support spaces at the AIS.
It will colocate sports medicine, physiotherapy and blood labs to maximise collaboration between these groups. A future imaging centre is expected to be developed with a commercial operator.
The new High Performance Testing and Support Centre will colocate a range of facilities.
Australian Sports Commission CEO Kieren Perkins told a Tourism Leaders Forum in June that with the Brisbane Olympics only eight years away, the faster the new facilities were up and running the faster they would make a difference for athletes.
But Mr Perkins admitted it was a big undertaking particularly in the current construction environment.
“We’ll continue to push hard to do the things we can control quickly but the reality is you ask anybody in the industry, building stuff at the moment is not easy finding the people, finding the materials, and those sorts of things are hard,” he told Region.
“So we know we’ve got a mountain to climb but we have to push hard because the reality is that Brisbane is only eight years away and we need to get as much value out of it as we can to support our athletes.”
Mr Perkins joked at the time that the athletes village was so old it was in danger of becoming heritage-listed.
Construction is expected to start in October 2025 and be completed by March 2027, although the sports dome will be ready by July 2026.
Submissions to the committee must be made by 24 January 2025.
To learn more visit the Federal Parliament website.
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