UWA Torpedoes sign lease agreement at Perth High Performance Centre to build water polo centre of excellence

UWA Torpedoes have hailed the signing of a rare lease agreement which guarantees them control over a portion of Perth High Performance Centre as a red-letter day for the water polo club. The Australian Water Polo League outfit will use the newly-signed lease to push ahead with multi-million dollar plans to turn their water polo facility into a centre of excellence aimed at turning local players into future Olympians. The Torpedoes have been granted full tenure by Venues West over the Mt Claremont water polo facility and they have grand plans to transform the space into a production line for world-class talent. After four years of negotiations, planning and advocacy, the State Government subsidiary has entrusted the club with a public asset for long-term development and management. President Peter Hughes said it was one of the most important days in the Torpedoes’ history. “If you take away winning national championships, certainly from a strategic position it’s clearly a red letter day, a landmark event,” he said. “We have ambitions to be an international and regional high performance centre and producing the highest calibre of athletes, hopefully that will represent our country, both male and female, at future Olympics and world championships.” Featuring the installation of a reception, administration, grandstands, change rooms, members’ area and potentially a gym, Hughes said the idea was not to attract interstate athletes. Instead, it would provide local players with the best environment within which to thrive and allow the Torpedoes to host touring international teams. “As an AWL club, we have to produce athletes of high calibre just to be competitive in that competition and so if you want to hold the license, it’s like anything in life,” Hughes said. “If you want to be involved, you’ve gotta have a crack, because if you’re just there to participate, what’s the point? “We’re doing a significant drive to make members attached to our club become social members. This season, we expect to have 2500 members and we want to drive our participation to 4000-5000 playing and social members over the next five years; that’s a pretty big group for basically an amateur sport.” Hughes is targeting a five-year timeline for the project, and is eager to bring all levels of government to the party financially to help the vision become a reality. “We think it’ll cost $4-5m. It would be done as cost effective as we can do it. “We would also raise funds ourselves. There’s a potential to borrow it and so, in a cobbled-up way, we would somehow get to 4.5 million hopefully, and then we can just go ahead and build it. It’s doable.” “I’ve got to get it done in the next five years, otherwise I might not be around to see any of it. I would think by 2030 we’d have it mostly constructed, or certainly under construction, but hopefully completed by then.”