‘We’re not a Big Build project’: Inside the $250 million Moonee Valley rebuild

Moonee Valley Racing Club has drawn a defiant line in the sand by declaring it will be hosting next year’s Cox Plate despite industry concerns the boutique venue’s $250 million mega rebuild would not be ready in time.

The club opened its track renovations to the media for the first time on Tuesday, less than three weeks out from this year’s unique staging of the club’s premier race, which will be run at Flemington for the first time while the Valley undergoes its 21-month extreme makeover.

In the face of speculation that the project had hit financial headwinds, Valley CEO Michael Browell said new turf would be laid before Christmas and they would be ready to return to racing for the group 1 Manikato Stakes meeting next year on the eve of the AFL grand final.

The Age reported last month that Racing Victoria had threatened to withhold the Cox Plate and industry prizemoney if Moonee Valley’s rebuild did not meet expectations or industry standards for racing at the elite level.

The demands included the ability for the tight-turning circuit to host 15,000 spectators without a grandstand, as well as offering a group 1-standard track and suitable race day facilities, such as new jockey rooms and a meeting place for trainers.

RV’s shock return-to-racing guidelines came just two months after the Valley board had rejected a one-sided merger proposal from the Melbourne Racing Club, put forward by MRC vice-chairman Jonathan Munz, which would have required the inner northern suburbs venue to close down for good.

Another recent area of concern for the Moonee Valley leadership, as revealed in The Age on Thursday, was a proposed amendment to government legislation that would have allowed a six-person racing panel to decide if one of the three Melbourne metropolitan clubs should be placed under Racing Victoria’s control if they were shown to be acting to the detriment of racing or wasting too much money.

The proposed amendment, which never came to pass, was emailed to Racing Minister Anthony Carbines’ office by Munz in July and was outlined in advice that prominent silk Peter Hanks KC had provided to the MRC.

While Browell did not publicly discuss outside pressures at Tuesday’s Cox Plate launch, he said Moonee Valley would “100 per cent” be hosting the country’s best weight-for-age horse race in 2027.

If right, one of the crown jewels of Australian racing will return to a track of vastly different dimensions after the old course was completely demolished – a process that began when punters enthusiastically began tearing the venue to pieces after the 2025 Cox Plate.

The new track has been moved closer to the CityLink Freeway and further from Wilson Street primary school, and includes a home straight that will be 144m longer (stretching from 173m to 307m) and runs east to west, rather than north to south.

The Cox Plate will also return to a venue that is temporarily without a new grandstand – the old ones were bulldozed to make way for new apartment buildings that are allowing Moonee Valley to self-fund the extensive project.

“When we finish this next apartment building [in 2029], we can move into construction of the event centre [grandstand],” Brow