BRINGING the club together from a facilities point of view remains one of Melbourne’s key focuses for the future, according to chief executive Cameron Schwab.
Although Schwab said last year’s relocation for the football department to AAMI Park had been significant, he was adamant that having the entire club in the one location was ideal. This is why the club is still continuing to look at the Docklands precinct.
“One of the challenges our club still faces is that we’re [not] all under the one roof,” Schwab said at Thursday night’s annual general meeting.
“We’re in a much better place than we’ve ever been before, but our club does suffer from the fact that we’re still on two sites.
“While our players are based at AAMI Park, it’s not possible to have our whole club at the one place. We’re very much trying to focus on a one club notion, which is everyone across the organisation.”
Schwab said that the concept of the club being housed in a community also had strong appeal.
“The second one is to try and create a physical presence within a community and Docklands provides that. Hopefully, as part of that, it’d give ourselves another asset by which we hopefully generate revenue from on a long-term basis.
“The proposal that’s been put forward - and it’s very early days - is that it fundamentally provides those things. If it doesn’t, then there is no point going forward.”
Schwab said the club would need to remain close to its spiritual home, which will always be the MCG.
“If there are 10 steps in it, we’re probably step one or two [into the Docklands proposal],” he said.
“We get a bit excited by it from time to time, but we’re very pragmatic, and in the meantime we’ve got a 21-year lease at AAMI Park - this has options every five years, which are our options.
“If something comes up which is statistically a much better option for us, then we need to pass a lot of tests for that to be that. Then we’d have the capacity to look at it.”
But Schwab stressed that AAMI Park was a first-class facility the club was relishing.
“The deal we’ve got at AAMI Park is a great fall back - we’ve got 21 years there … but if there is something seriously better for us and it still allows us to do what we do in Casey, then we can seriously look at it and assess it at that time,” he said.
“That’ll play itself out, having more and more information coming from that.”
Although Schwab said last year’s relocation for the football department to AAMI Park had been significant, he was adamant that having the entire club in the one location was ideal. This is why the club is still continuing to look at the Docklands precinct.
“One of the challenges our club still faces is that we’re [not] all under the one roof,” Schwab said at Thursday night’s annual general meeting.
“We’re in a much better place than we’ve ever been before, but our club does suffer from the fact that we’re still on two sites.
“While our players are based at AAMI Park, it’s not possible to have our whole club at the one place. We’re very much trying to focus on a one club notion, which is everyone across the organisation.”
Schwab said that the concept of the club being housed in a community also had strong appeal.
“The second one is to try and create a physical presence within a community and Docklands provides that. Hopefully, as part of that, it’d give ourselves another asset by which we hopefully generate revenue from on a long-term basis.
“The proposal that’s been put forward - and it’s very early days - is that it fundamentally provides those things. If it doesn’t, then there is no point going forward.”
Schwab said the club would need to remain close to its spiritual home, which will always be the MCG.
“If there are 10 steps in it, we’re probably step one or two [into the Docklands proposal],” he said.
“We get a bit excited by it from time to time, but we’re very pragmatic, and in the meantime we’ve got a 21-year lease at AAMI Park - this has options every five years, which are our options.
“If something comes up which is statistically a much better option for us, then we need to pass a lot of tests for that to be that. Then we’d have the capacity to look at it.”
But Schwab stressed that AAMI Park was a first-class facility the club was relishing.
“The deal we’ve got at AAMI Park is a great fall back - we’ve got 21 years there … but if there is something seriously better for us and it still allows us to do what we do in Casey, then we can seriously look at it and assess it at that time,” he said.
“That’ll play itself out, having more and more information coming from that.”
