By Charlene Macaulay
A multi-million dollar 15,000-seat stadium has been earmarked for Tarneit as part of an ambitious bid to base a new A-League football team in Wyndham.
Dubbed “Wyndham Stadium”, the privately-funded sporting mecca has been flagged for a Wyndham-council owned parcel of land at 1160 Sayers Road and includes training pitches, sports medicine facilities, a gym, recovery spaces, sporting spaces for the community and residential and commercial development for the surrounding area.
The plans include a university, believed to be Deakin University, collaborating as part of the sports science precinct.
The grand plans are the brainchild of Western Melbourne Group Holdings, which is bidding for one of two new team licenses as part of a Football Federation Australia expansion of the A-League.
Wyndham council has provided in-principle support to the bid by offering the land for development.
Maurice Bisetto from the Western Melbourne Group said the bid has been more than a year in the making.
“This is truly a momentous occasion for Australian football,” he said.
“Thanks to the support from the council, the dreams and the vision are now real.”
According to reports, there are 15 bids for the new teams, including four bids from Victoria, four from New South Wales, three from Queensland and one each from Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory.
The winning bidders are expected to be announced on October 31.
Wyndham mayor Peter Maynard said if successful, Wyndham would become a destination for the world game.
“It will bring people from across Australia right here to Wyndham to watch on as the nation’s best football players battle it out on the field,” Cr Maynard said.
“The value of this landmark deal for our community will be massive, positioning us as a destination of choice, and putting us on the national and international sporting stage.”
Wyndham council’s city economy director Kate Roffey said initiatives such as this were great ways to fund new infrastructure in a booming region.
“We don’t have that luxury in the west, we need to make things happen ourselves,” she said.
The Sayers Road site was earmarked for Wyndham’s third aquatics centre.
Ms Roffey said the proposed stadium and surrounding precinct “doesn’t actually impact on the area that the aquatic facility has been proposed to be built”, but stopped short of confirming that an aquatics centre would be built on-site.
“The exact location of any future aquatic facility in this area will be determined in time taking into regard the most appropriate location for such a facility,” she said.
