He's still for it, but reckons it doesn't need a roof.
Have you ever been to Huddersfield, England, tucked into a valley on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors? It's windy there and it snows.
In 1991, the local council and business interests combined to build a new multipurpose sports stadium that is home to Huddersfield Town Football Club, Huddersfield Rugby League Club, has a business and conference centre, community and leisure pool, nine-screen cinema complex, golf driving range, and, among other facilities, a restaurant and bar.
It doesn't have a roof, well at least, not over the playing area.
Neither do similar new stadiums in Hull, Southampton or Swansea, or the Emirates Stadium in North London, home of the Arsenal Football Club.
So who needs a roof?
Flashback: it's May 2005. I'm watching a Super 12 match at Carisbrook with a daughter and grandchildren.
The view from behind the goalposts is limited. We're too far from the action and not high enough.
The seat is giving me a sore bum.
The Highlanders are being walloped by the Warratahs. But it's a fine, windless evening.
Later that year I'm reading about the desperate need to increase and improve Dunedin's conference facilities.
The city (make that city business people) is losing millions of dollars because it doesn't have up-to-the-minute facilities, and a glass extension to the town hall is being planned.
Along with most of Dunedin's population, I'm appalled.
Then a thought occurs: why not a new stadium with conference facilities, and situated within a stone's throw of the CBD, behind the railway station?
I float the idea in an ODT article published on November 25 that year.
Wheels start to turn.
Flash forward: a lot of water has flowed under the bridge, and somehow a roof got into the mix.
The idea of a new stadium being a multipurpose facility seems to have been put on the back burner, especially as the chosen site is not all that handy to the CBD.
I'm an advocate of the new stadium because the examples in the opening paragraph have resulted in increased attendance at matches, a sense of civic pride, and in some cases, more on-the-field success for the clubs involved.
Ask yourself, where would we be, as a city and civilisation, if we didn't take risks?
Was the time ever right for Columbus to ask Ferdinand and Isabella for funds to discover a new world?
Would the time ever be right to build anything as big and costly as a new stadium?
But I can see it being empty except for weekends. Even with a roof, what use will it be unless it has true multipurpose functionality.
Carisbrook, like all the old stadiums all over the planet, like all the old cinemas that got revamped into multiplexes, has had its day.
It needs a makeover but is not ideally situated to be a multi-purpose facility.
So a new stadium, yes. But it doesn't need a roof, and it has to be more than about rugby.
Much, much more.
Ian Williams is a Dunedin writer
