New stadium approved for Penrith

A serious redevelopment of Penrith Stadium, 55km west of Sydney’s CBD, has been greenlit by the NSW authorities’s Division of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure. In response to a communique from Infrastructure NSW, the brand new Populous-designed stadium is “set to develop into a superior leisure venue, enhancing the expertise for followers and spectators.”

The brand new venue will utterly overhaul town’s current stadium “with higher seats and sightlines in new grandstands, extra meals retailers, facilities and recreation house, new scoreboards and ribbon boards, sound techniques and lighting,” the discharge reads.

As a part of the improve, the bottom capability will likely be elevated from 22,500 to roughly 25,000 attendees with house for a further 5,000 folks throughout concert events, which the venue will host as much as ten occasions per yr. The stadium’s current east and west grandstands will likely be changed with bigger, steeper seating, which features a 300 % improve in accessible seating locations. In response to the discharge, the brand new grandstands are anticipated to ship “premium views … boosting vitality, sound and pleasure for followers, groups and gamers.”

The venue’s bogs will see an 85 % improve in accessible bathrooms and a considerable improve in ladies’s bathrooms. Upgraded participant facilities, particularly these for ladies, are supposed to assist the expansion of girls’s sport.

Populous director Al Baxter commented that the agency’s design creates “a venue that may promote and assist the continued development of sports activities throughout the Western Sydney neighborhood.”

“It’ll present an distinctive customer expertise for sporting occasions, concert events and stay leisure,” Baxter stated.

Elsewhere within the precinct, new open areas, multipurpose courts and improved landscaping will present higher shade for leisure and neighborhood use. Whereas the central pitch and neighborhood greenspace on the north and south hills will stay, the coaching subject to the west of the stadium will likely be remodelled right into a warm-up subject with neighborhood infrastructure and landscaping.

The mission has been ongoing since 2022, with its idea first unveiled in January 2024 and its State Important Growth software on public exhibition from Could to June. Suggestions in response to submissions was addressed in August.

A constructing contract is anticipated to be awarded shortly, with work scheduled to start early 2025. Completion is slated for 2026.