Detailed artist impressions and a 3D fly-through of the new home for the South Sydney Rabbitohs have been revealed today by Randwick Mayor Danny Said and Souths CEO Blake Solly.
The new home for the NRL’s oldest club forms part of Randwick City Council’s $58M community sporting complex in Maroubra called the Heffron Centre which also includes a community indoor sports centre and gymnastics centre.
Located in Heffron Park, the state-of-the-art facility includes significant publicly accessible areas such as a café, hall of fame, merchandise shop and fan area to view training on the NRL standard showcase field.
The Rabbitohs will move their headquarters and Souths Cares community outreach work from their spiritual home of Redfern into their south-east supporter heartland of Randwick City by the end of 2022.
South Sydney Rabbitohs CEO Blake Solly said the facility has been designed to provide shared community use of many of the facilities including a dedicated Souths Cares classroom, lecture theatre, function rooms as well as access to the playing field.
“The Heffron Centre will allow us to move our NRL, Women’s and NSW Cup teams and administrative, commercial and Souths Cares staff members to one site – with the rest of our representative pathways programs using Redfern Oval,” says Mr Solly.
“Importantly it will also allow us to double the size and reach of our community programs which have already helped achieve over 400 Aboriginal employment placements, helped young people achieve their HSC and helped over 7,600 students with health and well-being messages.
“We are intent on ensuring the Centre is a facility the Club, the Council and the community will be very proud of.
“We’re all very excited to see the project move to the next level and the production of these high resolution images and the fly-through video gives us all a fantastic insight into how the Heffron Centre will look and operate.”
Randwick Mayor Danny Said stated the release of the detailed graphics is a significant milestone.
“It’s been a lot of hard work to get to this point and I’m very pleased that we are on the verge of starting construction on what will be the biggest project ever undertaken by Randwick Council,” Mayor Said commented.
“This facility is funded by Souths and all three levels of Government and has been seven years in planning. It will deliver more than 200 jobs during construction and more than 60 ongoing jobs through the operation of the facility.
“In a testament to Souths’ strong community ties, this is not just a football facility – it’s a community sporting complex with half the facility dedicated to a new state-of-the-art indoor sports centre and gymnastics centre.
“It will be a true community sporting facility for the whole community and provides Souths with the opportunity to expand their Souths Cares community outreach work with our local schools and young people.”
Minister for Sport, Geoff Lee, said the centre would be a world-class, high-performance training, administration and community facility.
“This facility will support the development of promising young and high-performance male and female players in south-east Sydney while the dedicated multi-purpose community facilities will enable the Rabbitohs to expand their community programs, initiatives and engagement,” Mr Lee said.
“This investment will support the Rabbitohs’ quest for men’s and women’s premierships in the future.”
The community gymnastics facility will be able to operate seven days a week up to 10pm and includes state-of-the-art facilities including a dedicated gymnastics zone showcasing community history, awards and memories.
The indoor sports centre will also operate seven days a week up to 10pm with two multi-purpose sports halls to accommodate sports such as netball, basketball, badminton, volleyball and futsal.
The Heffron Centre will be fully owned by Randwick City Council with lease arrangements in place to the South Sydney Rabbitohs and operators of the indoor sports centre and gymnastics centre.
Randwick City Council is currently seeking tenders for construction of the centre which is anticipated to commence in mid to late 2021.
