Ōmokoroa resident Michael Galloway makes his feelings known at a Hands Off Tauranga Domain protest meeting at the Tauranga Racecourse. Photo / Sandra Conchie
Protestors opposed to building a $220 million-plus boutique stadium at the Tauranga Domain have been urged to show up at a council meeting this month when a decision on the proposal’s next step is due.
About a hundred people attended the Hands Off Tauranga Domain protest meeting at the Tauranga Racecourse on Tuesday night.
The multi-use 7000-seat stadium with an exhibition and function centre is among proposals in the Tauranga City Council’s Active Reserves Masterplans, which cover the Tauranga Domain, Baypark and Blake Park.
The masterplans propose relocations including moving the Tauranga Croquet Club and the Tauranga Lawn Bowling Club from the domain, the all-weather athletics track from the domain to Baypark Stadium, and temporarily moving the speedway’s pit area in Baypark to allow extra space for community sports.
The council’s commission will discuss making an initial decision on whether the proposal should be included in its Long-Term Plan 2023-2024 at a meeting on August 21.
Commission chairwoman Anne Tolley said in a written statement after the meeting that details of the proposal had to “stack up” before that decision and if it went ahead, formal community consultation would follow. And a project leader said consultation would allow the public to judge the viability of the stadium “based on facts”.
At the public meeting, Tauranga Lawn Tennis Club president Philip Brown urged protesters to attend the council meeting later this month and ask to speak at the public forum.
“It would be great if there was a queue of 100 people waiting to come into the meeting as that would send a very clear message to the commissioners,” he told the meeting.
Brown said, in his opinion, the story behind the proposed stadium was “long and torturous” with secrecy and a “lack of public consultation”, and it had been hard to have their objections heard.
“But this is not a reason to give up. Tauranga Domain is our Central Park [New York] and needs to remain now and for future generations, for our children and grandchildren.”
Brown described the cost to build the proposed stadium as “eye-watering” and said it would mean destroying open green space in downtown Tauranga and evicting three community sports.
He said it was clear to the group that the costs of the project “outweigh the benefits and the city is likely to end up with fewer amenities than what exists now”.
John Robson, one of the former city councillors discharged of their duties in 2021 after the Government appointed the commission, told the meeting that ratepayers would be adversely affected if the stadium went ahead.
Robson gave his personal estimations of the proposed stadium’s finances and impact on ratepayers, saying the project was, in his view, “not only a piece of stupidity” but he believed it also had not been “properly consulted [on] with the community”.
He believed it would “conservatively” require a $15m subsidy to cover its operational deficit each year and that would be “another 5 per cent a year on your rates”.
Tauranga Millennium Track Trust member Garth Mathieson said the proposed stadium would “not be fit for purpose” for the city and the costs outweighed its benefits.
“In my opinion, the suggested revenue streams for the stadium are a fantasy,” Mathieson said.
Trust secretary Murray Clarkson said there was no room at the domain for the proposed stadium that, in his view, would not provide “any recreational advantage for a recreational reserve”.
Tauranga Bowling Club member Terry McGee said he strongly opposed the boutique stadium because it could potentially damage five sports, including his own club.
McGee said building the stadium did not make sense to him when there was already a 20,000-seat stadium less than 50km away in Rotorua, and Baypark was a 15-minute drive from the city.
Ōmokoroa resident Michael Galloway - a regular user of the athletic track, where he has coached young athletes - said the proposed stadium was a “waste of money”.
“Particularly, the cost of setting it up and the running costs do not outweigh the cost of destroying all this precious greenspace and the loss of community sports groups.”
Tauranga Croquet Club president Gretchen Benvie said, in her view, the proposed stadium would be “paving paradise and turning [it] into a parking lot”.
Benvie said croquet had been played at the Tauranga Domain since 1902 and at no time over the past 120 years had the council or its predecessors carried out any work to “produce the fine facility we have today”.
The club had a “bigger and more active membership” than it has had in many years and formed part of Tauranga’s history, and should be retained.
Benvie said the domain itself was “extremely well” used every day.
“We must urge the commissioners to think long and hard before destroying a beautiful, well-used, historic open greenspace,” she said.
“If anything is done to the domain, it should be to enhance the area, not destroy what we have.”
Also at the meeting were former Tauranga City councillor Murray Guy, New Zealand First’s Tauranga electorate candidate Erika Harvey and Bay of Plenty electorate candidate Kirsten Murfitt, and Act‘s candidate for Tauranga , Christine Young.
Tom Rutherford, the National Party’s Bay of Plenty electorate candidate also attended the meeting.
In a statement to the Bay of Plenty Times after the meeting, council commission chairwoman Tolley said the proposed stadium was a community-led project.
She said no decision had been made on whether to include it in the Long-Term Plan 2023-24, which would “provide opportunities for everyone with an interest to be consulted and provide and have their feedback considered”.
She said an initial decision on this would be made on August 21 in the light of community feedback and further information about costs, benefits, and affordability of a stadium.
“All of that detail will have to stack up before it does proceed to formal community consultation.”
In response to comments made at the protest meeting, Tolley said: “There is no intent to ‘destroy’ the greenspace available to the community or ‘pave paradise and turn it into a parking lot’.”
Western Bay of Plenty economic development agency Priority One has led the development of the proposed boutique community stadium. Chief executive Nigel Tutt said in a written statement after the meeting that community consultation was “exactly” what was asked for when it updated the council on its preliminary business case for the project in May.
“If included in the Long-Term Plan, community consultation will allow the public to judge this project’s viability based on facts, rather than the content of this protest meeting,” Tutt said.
- Additional reporting Zoe Hunter
Sandra Conchie is a senior journalist at the Bay of Plenty Times and the Rotorua Daily Post who has been a journalist for 24 years. She mainly covers police, court and other justice stories, as well as general news. She has been a Canon Media Awards regional/community reporter of the year. Sandra was at the Hands Off Tauranga Domain protest meeting.
Western Bay of Plenty District could have fewer councillors to vote for next election.