The Parramatta Eels’ new Centre of Excellence will provide the club with a new facility worthy of its standing as an elite rugby league club. The team that represents Sydney’s second CBD, the entire club will benefit from the new facility, from men’s and women’s teams, as well as lower grade and junior teams.
This continued upgrade of sporting facilities is nothing new. We wrote about it earlier in the year. The NSW Government has allocated funds towards new facilities for the Wests Tigers, South Sydney Rabbitohs, St George Illawarra Dragons and Parramatta Eels, not to mention a new NSWRU Centre of Excellence for the NSW Waratahs for the ‘rival code’.
In Victoria it's much the same. Richmond Tigers have become the beneficiary of state funding, with their new building at Punt Road currently in the works. North Melbourne and St Kilda have also had plans completed by HB Arch, the designer of the Parramatta Eels COE.
But while these facilities are typically only associated with the first grade players and the lower grades, community is key for many of them. The Parramatta facility, located on Council land, has been the subject of community consultation, with the internal spaces to be used by locals, promoting sport and connection with Western Sydney’s recent grand finalists.
HB Arch Principal, Gray Barton, is overseeing the design of the Eels’ new facility. Working with a number of elite Australian sporting outfits, Barton says each of the projects have differed in their purpose and connection with community.
“There’s a broader criteria in terms of it being a training facility, they all have core components, but in terms of how they sit on a site and the relationship with the site and the broader community, that always varies.
“In this instance, it was quite similar to two AFL projects we undertook, in the sense that they’re essentially public reserves as indeed this one is.
“There's just as much emphasis on the community side as what there is on the club areas. The relationship between those two defines a lot of the spaces. The Eels have an excellent community program in terms of all their junior pathways and building reflects that in a big way.”
Five football fields sit on the site, which will host junior football games, with large multi-purpose rooms able to be utilised by townspeople for various programs. Barton says there is little differentiation in the built form of both the Centre of Excellence and community facility.
“Visual connectivity, regardless of first grade, women’s, junior pathways or community they all relate to one another. In terms of the architecture, form, articulation and material palette, we do strive to get a consistency between the two so that there's a language that they share, even though they are freestanding separate buildings.”
The evolution of Australian sport has seen many teams outlive or outgrow their administrative spaces. Parramatta were an epitome of such an issue, with many departments based across the city away from the football department and executive team. A main objective, Barton says, was consolidation.
“This project has provided the entire club with an opportunity to bring everyone back under one roof. It makes for a better workplace environment.
“We wanted to put a plan in place that creates maximum interaction between all staff. That can be as simple as having central elements in the way that you lay the building out so that there's both a visual and physical connection that occurs.
“It may be through informal meetings throughout the building, or from a one-on-one between coach and player, to a meeting where there's 150 personnel in attendance. That might only happen once or twice a year, but it's about trying to maximise the potential and the efficiency of all that interaction.
“Jim Sarantinos is the CEO of Parramatta. One of the things he said early to us was that he wanted everyone in the organisation to come and go via the same front door, to have the same entry sequence, to have people walking past their key social space as the heart of the building, and the sequence of spaces has responded to that.”
The diversity of the project, in which sporting, community and commercial facilities are all intertwined under the one roof has been a challenge Barton and HB Arch have looked to respond to with aplomb.
“The piece of the exercise I enjoy the most is the fact that it’s quite a diverse mixed-use project all under the umbrella of one organisation. Understanding the diversity of the project, in terms of making the most of all those different elements is a really challenging exercise, and the measure of success for the project will be how much added benefit we can provide,” he says.
“The balance between club and community is quite even. I think there really is a strong emphasis on the community side, a really genuine community program both on and off field for the Eels.”
Construction of the Centre of Excellence and Community Facility at Kellyville Park is scheduled to be completed by 2025. The facility will include a gym, cardio and yoga rooms for players, theatre and review rooms, café, and aquatic rehabilitation. The Community Facility building will include a grandstand, community rooms, gym, match-day media rooms, change-rooms, and parking.
More information regarding the project can be found here.
