New ball game for Lansdowne design team
Sports Minister John O'Donoghue yesterday hailed as "an important milestone" the appointment of the design and project management teams for the Lansdowne project. The announcement also confirmed that a planning application is on course for December.
The design contract has been awarded to a consortium led by HOK Sports and which also includes Irish architects Scott Tallon Walker, Buro Happold and M-E Engineers.
HOK Sports was involved in drawing up the masterplan for the redevelopment of Croke Park and is currently involved in the Wembley and Arsenal's Emirates Stadium projects.
The company has also been involved in the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Stadium Australia, the upgrading of Wimbledon, and Ascot and Cheltenham racecourses.
HOK architect Rod Sheard said: "we are thrilled to be involved with such an important project that is at the heart of Irish sport. Our job will be to recreate for Landsowne Road a new stadium which will take the best of the history of the site and incorporate new state-of-the-art facilities which the teams and supporters deserve."
The contract for Project Management Services has been awarded to a consortium led by Project Management Ltd (PM), one of Ireland's largest specialist technical consultancy and project management firms. Recent PM projects in Ireland include Pfizer, UCC, Abbott (Cootehill, Co. Cavan) and Dublin Bus.
The newly appointed Design Team will start work immediately to develop a final detailed design for the new stadium. And yesterday, Mr O'Donoghue reaffirmed the decision of the Government to provide €191m of the estimated project cost of €292m.
"The company is now fully geared up to lodge a planning application in December in accordance with the timetable previously announced." "We now have a team in place which can deliver a world-class facility which will be a vital support for sport at national and international level and at the same time can also respond constructively to the concerns of the local community."
Meanwhile, Croke Park stadium chief Peter McKenna is confident that the pitch resurfacing at GAA headquarters will be a success.
Last year a number of counties complained that the surface was too hard leading to concerns about the potential for serious injury. Managers and players were consulted on the problem and Croker ground staff have been working overtime for the past six weeks to address those problems.
"We're very happy with the pitch's 'performance' on Sunday," said McKenna following the Leinster U21 Final replay and the NFL semi-final.
"There was a lot of work put into it since the beginning of March. Ordinarily, it takes ten weeks to do that kind of work but we did it in six. We were hoping for benign weather conditions which we didn't get. We had frost and snow in March but that just shows that it can still be done.
"There is always a worry that frost or night-time dips in temperature will crack the surface but that didn't happen."
McKenna solicited the opinions of both players and management from amongst the four teams that played there on Sunday and the response, he claims, was overwhelmingly positive.
Despite the success of the remedial work, it will be three to four more weeks before the new surface reaches its full maturity with McKenna admitting that it "played a little soft" on Sunday.
"The pitch was chosen as it would be one that could be played in all conditions 52 weeks of the year and one that is responsive to quick growth regimes. It received a lot of criticism, and justifiably so and we knew we needed to adjust accordingly."
The pitch's well-being will be tested to the full this summer including the U2 concerts on June 24, 25 and 27. That will entail allowing the new surface to almost die out. It is then cut tight before being covered for the duration needed.
"The more concerts you have the harder it will be on the surface," admitted McKenna.
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