Eden Park expected to be crowned Auckland’s main stadium today before formal vote next month

Eden Park is tipped to be crowned the city’s premium stadium at a meeting of Auckland councillors behind closed doors today.

Nearly nine months after Mayor Wayne Brown set up a working group to resolve what a multi-purpose “Auckland Main Stadium” would look like for the city, it is understood Eden Park will win out against three other proposals.

Councillor Shane Henderson, chair of the working group, said this morning the closed-door workshop is expected to make a recommendation to go to the council’s governing body meeting in May for a vote.

The other three proposals are:

Henderson would not comment on Eden Park being the frontrunner, saying councillors are not at that point yet.

But with Brown making it clear any stadium options will be at “no cost to ratepayers” and no funding in the council’s 10-year budget to contribute to the hundreds of millions of dollars for a new stadium, council sources are picking the status quo at Eden Park.

Henderson said the purpose of the process is to say “This is Auckland’s choice for a large stadium and it gives confidence to the private sector that it may want to invest”.

“We have always been very clear that ratepayers’ money is very little to none available, but at the same time we are signalling to the market of stadiums ‘hey, here’s what you might want to do and get your best people onto it’,” he said.

Henderson said even the status quo would have costs.

“The most important thing is the financials have to stack up, and that’s our first port of call. Financials and the site,” he said.

The latest plans are playing out 13 years after Auckland Council unveiled plans to rationalise the city’s four stadiums – Go Media, North Harbour, Western Springs and Eden Park – and put them on a “more sustainable financial footing”.

Since then five plans have come and gone and nothing has changed.

A separate proposal in the 10-year budget is to redevelop North Harbour Stadium by downsizing from 25,000 seats to about 8000.

This would lead to Auckland having a large stadium (Eden Park), a medium-sized stadium (Go Media, Mt Smart) and a small stadium (North Harbour) with the future of Western Springs still up in the air.

The North Habour proposal is strongly opposed by Albany councillors John Watson and Wayne Walker, and the MP for East Coast Bays, Erica Stanford.