Queensland’s oldest builder, Hutchies, will move demolition crews onto the Ekka’s Machinery Hill in September, the opening act of the $287.5 million rebuild of Brisbane’s RNA Showgrounds, revealed in new renders, with an upgraded 20,000-seat Main Arena, a new grandstand, and a multi-storey horse pavilion all due before the 2032 Games. That is according to Jarrod Bleijie, Queensland’s Deputy Premier and Minister for State Development, Infrastructure and Planning, who confirmed the construction timeline earlier today.
“It is being delivered and contracted with Hutchinson Builders,” Bleijie said, telling reporters the sum matched what the RNA had requested and that the works remain on time and on budget, a year after he promised both. Funding comes from the $3.5 billion the government has committed to athlete villages for the 2032 Games.
“Whilst the footprint has shrunk a little bit, we’ve actually gone vertical,” RNA Chief Executive Brendan Christou said of a design that replaces horse stables he describes as in very poor condition with a multi-storey pavilion holding the same event space on less land. Christou claims the new works also cut accessible routes from Brookes Street and O’Connell Terrace down to the arena floor, built for the Paralympic athletes who will be housed overlooking the arena and for every Ekka crowd after them.
Timed around the show itself, demolition will wait until the Ekka’s 150th edition closes on 16 August, with the RNA staging every show through construction, and 2032 the only year the gates stay shut. Last year’s early works restored the heritage-listed Ernest Baynes and John MacDonald grandstands and carried the planning and design for the arena upgrade now under contract.
The contract award follows the Crisafulli Government’s March 2025 decision to move the Brisbane Athlete Village from Hamilton Northshore to the showgrounds, a switch made under a deal with Lendlease that ministers said would save at least $2 billion in sewerage, water, and power. Its finished form will be the largest village of the Games, housing up to 10,000 athletes and officials, before 2,000 dwellings are converted into inner-city homes.
Athletes moving in will overlook 25 King Street, for a time the world’s tallest engineered timber office building and part of the estate Lendlease and the RNA have developed over the past 15 years. The government has not named structural materials for the arena or pavilion works, leaving open the question of timber’s place in a Games build that, in 2023, slated the village itself for mass timber, and one UQ researcher argues now turns on commercial choices rather than engineering.
Not every corner of the precinct is settled, with Bleijie telling reporters the International Olympic Committee has yet to make a final determination on whether the neighbouring Exhibition Station will operate during the Games, even as he named an open station a government priority.
“How are they going to pay for any solution if Exhibition Station is closed?” Shadow Treasurer Shannon Fentiman told reporters that Bleijie had insisted only last month that the station would be open, while opposition-tabled documents claim the new stop needs security upgrades before the event.
It comes as the government released its Victoria Park masterplan at the weekend, with two pedestrian bridges to link the planned Brisbane Stadium to the CBD and the National Aquatic Centre, and those costs are held outside the $7.1 billion venues envelope.
