2010 - 2011 - 2012 - 2013?
SEA Games hosting at risk
Sports Hub delays could mean it may not be fully ready for 2013 Games
By Leonard Lim (TheStraitsTimes)
Delays continue to dog the Sports Hub, with the earliest completion date for the troubled $1.87 billion project at Kallang now understood to be 2013.
This has put Singapore's hosting of the 2013 South-east Asia Games in jeopardy. Some senior sports officials have privately raised the possibility that Singapore may have to forgo hosting that year's SEA Games if there are further delays. Should that happen, it would be a major blow to the Republic, which had hoped to use the biennial multi-sport extravaganza to showcase the world-class facility - the centrepiece of which will be a 55,000-seater dome-shaped National Stadium with a retractable roof.
The Singapore Sports Hub Consortium (SSHC) hopes to sign the final contract with the Singapore Sports Council by year-end, said Mr Ludwig Reichhold, managing director of construction firm Dragages Singapore, yesterday. Dragages is the lead agency of the consortium that trumped bids from two other groups in January last year. The contract was to have been inked in March last year but was delayed by financial and legal nitty-gritty. The SSHC hopes to pull down the National Stadium by the first quarter of next year. The demolition will take about three months.
Construction of the hub can then begin and will take about three years to finish. But a source said: 'Even with this timeline, a completion date of mid-2013 is still touch and go.'
The hub is a public-private partnership (PPP) project. This means the Government will pay the SSHC - which will design, build, and operate the facility - a monthly unitary payment throughout the project's 25-year term once the final contract is inked. But since the project was announced in 2005, its completion date has been pushed back repeatedly - from 2010, to 2011, then 2012 and now 2013.
This has kept sporting enthusiasts hoping to use the facilities, like a public water sports centre and indoor aquatic centre, waiting. It also means a longer wait for Singaporeans to watch star sporting events like the Twenty20 cricket matches, which the SSHC had promised to bring to the hub.
The delays have also partly stemmed from the SSHC's difficulty in raising funds as financial institutions tightened lending requirements following the economic downturn late last year. The finances for the hub have not been settled but a London-based publication, Infrastructure Journal, said in April that the Singapore Government stood ready to step in and bail out the struggling project.
Mr Reichhold declined comment on this, and an SSC spokesman said there were no updates for now in response to queries on the Sports Hub. If the Government gets involved - possibly by providing part of the financing or some form of debt guarantee - it would change the nature of the project, which was to have been fully funded by the private sector. Another reason for the delay: The SSHC is believed to be toying with the idea of building some facilities at a later stage so as to lower construction costs at the start.
According to the sports council's tender specifications, the 35ha site must have a 6,000-capacity indoor aquatic centre, a 3,000-capacity multi-purpose arena, a public water sports centre, and 41,000sqm of shopping, leisure and dining facilities, on top of the new National Stadium. Facilities in the SSHC's proposal which could be dropped or built later include a whitewater rafting facility, an indoor karting arena, and a water adventure playground with flumes and slides.
'We're still in talks over the whole matter, but we definitely want to finalise the contract as soon as possible,' said Mr Reichhold.
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