The Sydney sports oval costing council $60,000 a month to sit empty

A northern Sydney football oval that has been closed for three years and had eight cost blowouts is costing ratepayers $60,000 a month to sit unused as councillors await a report that could mean the synthetic sports field redevelopment will go back to square one.

Ku-ring-gai Council promised residents in early 2023 that replacing grass at Norman Griffiths Oval in West Pymble with an all-weather sporting field would take a few months and cost $3 million. More than three years later, the estimated redevelopment cost has ballooned sixfold to $20.2 million, and a council spokesperson confirmed it no longer had a completion date of May 2027.

Managing the oval has cost the council about $60,000 a month in April, May and June. Costs include hiring site fencing, paying for the CCTV, “dewatering”, and other labour costs. The cost of removing surface water from May to July was $129,000.

It comes after councillors in May voted to hit pause on the project and wait for a $70,000 report from the independent state government public works authority, comparing costs to install a natural grass field or a synthetic turf surface. It was also decided that the council would conduct a representative, not opt-in, resident survey before committing to further costs.

At an extraordinary meeting in May, councillor Indu Balachandran said: “I recognise and I understand that there is a cost to that. But I think good democratic processes have to be strategic.”

At another extraordinary meeting, on July 29, three councillors – Martin Smith, Jeff Pettett and Sam Ngai – put up a rescission motion to reverse decisions made at the May meeting.

Ngai said his main concern was the “higher than expected” costs of the oval sitting idle, but there was also the flow-on impact any delays would have on construction costs.

“The public works report is late by a month, so that pushes the timeline out, and we won’t be deciding on the project until November … There’s going to be cost escalations from inflation and construction in the half a year or so since May,” Ngai said.

The motion attempted to speed up delivery of a synthetic turf before advice from the state government authority was completed and provided to councillors.

“The community doesn’t need this to be slowed down any more,” Smith said.

“It needs the council to act. It needs it to progress forward. We’ve got safeguard measures in place. We know what the costs are.”

The motion to overturn May’s decision was lost after Mayor Christine Kay used her casting vote and the original motion was upheld.

Kay said the community deserved a decision “based on complete information, independent advice and a clear understanding of the costs, not a decision made just before the information becomes available”.

Pettett decided to vote against his own rescission motion. Ngai said this confused him, and the trio would not have called the meeting if they knew the outcome was the status quo.