The Point Chevalier RSA has been in a dire financial state for years. Photo / Michael Craig
Supermarket chain Foodstuffs is buying the multi-million dollar site at Point Chevalier RSA - alarming a former president and members who have alleged a forced sale vote and years of missing financial records.
The Herald can reveal designs for the planned New World supermarket in the central Auckland suburb - which will incorporate a facility for a new RSA on top of it, along with parking and commercial office space.
The Point Chevalier RSA has been in a dire financial state for years and a vote by RSA members to sell a 4000 sqm block of land it owns on Great North Rd was conducted on May 15.
The block was valued by Auckland Council at $6.1 million in June 2021 but it is understood to have been independently valued much higher - close to $10 million.
However, questions have arisen over the transparency of the deal, with some members alleging no financial detail was supplied to members on what Point Chev RSA would be receiving from the sale of the land to Foodstuffs.
RSA national director, Murray Hobson, and Point Chev RSA former president, Bill Ashdown, are understood to be the only figures who brokered the deal with Foodstuffs management.
Hobson says the deal is the culmination of a working group elected by RSA members in 2014 to find a solution to replace the existing clubrooms which needed significant maintenance.
"The detail of the proposed development, of which the land sale is only one component, is commercially sensitive and will not be shared directly with media," Hobson told the Herald.
"Point Chevalier Memorial RSA has received advice that the terms and conditions of the sale are favourable for Point Chevalier RSA and its members."
It is understood the RSA will receive an additional amount of money on top of the new clubrooms for the purchase of the prime land on Great North Road - Point Chevalier's main shopping strip.
But the deal has angered many closely involved in the day-to-day running of the club.
Former Point Chev RSA club president Neville Swan resigned in April over his dissatisfaction about being "kept in the dark" about the finances of the sale.
"This is actually one of the reasons I resigned from the club because I wasn't happy with what was going on," Swan said.
"I was kept in the dark pretty much with the process of going through the whole set up of as far as the [new] building was concerned. Meetings were actually held behind my back pretty much," Swan claimed.
Swan was concerned the value of the new RSA clubrooms Foodstuffs was building was nowhere near equal to the land value.
"There is a discrepancy as far as I'm concerned where the value of the land is worth $12 million," Swan claimed.
"I was not happy with that either. Murray Hobson - I pulled him up a couple of times, because I was the president.
"I said, 'You obviously don't need a president, you're quite happy running it yourself' so I have just resigned. My vice-president then lasted two months [as the new president]."
The Point Chev RSA has had three separate presidents over the last year.
Four RSA members present at the May 15 annual general meeting were also frustrated at what they described as the lack of financial detail provided by Hobson and Ashdown before they had to vote.
"It was almost like a scare tactic. Like 'Oh, if we don't sell now, we will be liquidating, and all the funds will just go to the RSA in Wellington to distribute'," one member claimed.
"It was the oddest AGM I've ever had in regards to the selling of the building. We had to take their word for it, there was no financial reports, nothing."
Another member present at the May 15 meeting described the RSA sale pitch as: "Basically if you don't vote for this, the club's going to go under anyway and we're going to lose everything. So really they gave the members no choice whatsoever. We won't have any asset left. I mean we're sitting on $15, $20 million."
The vote itself, which some members who were present said consisted of only around 60 people, has also raised suspicion.
Hobson confirmed the Point Chevalier RSA has a total of 307 members, but would not verify the exact numbers of the sale vote beyond saying it was passed with one vote against and one abstention.
"When I looked around at all the people present, 80 per cent of all those people I've never seen before and they're apparently all members," the RSA member claimed.
A source within the management of the club told the Herald financial records had not been properly kept for the past two or three years. Swan also claimed this.
"It's the strangest arrangement I've ever come across. There's no finances disclosed," an RSA source familiar with the bookkeeping of the branch told the Herald.
But Hobson disputed all the allegations levelled at him.
"It is not true the members were told during the meeting that if they did not agree to sell the land to Foodstuffs for the new development the club would be liquidated," Hobson said.
"I was asked how long the RSA could remain open and trading if the members decided not to proceed with the development and I replied in my opinion it could be as short as two weeks if there was no improvement in patronage. Although this may have been hard for the members, who have made these allegations, to hear, in my opinion, it was a truthful response."
Hobson also assured "all attendees at the meeting were financial members of the RSA".
"It is not true the pitch to sell the RSA land is a 'scare tactic'. The proposed development, including the land sale, is a viable solution to a problem that the members of Point Chevalier RSA have had for some years," he said.
"Point Chevalier RSA does not have sufficient funds to undertake the deferred maintenance on the current clubrooms and their layout and condition is not conducive to growing the patronage."
Hobson also denies financial records hadn't been kept at the Point Chev RSA and says the club suffered a ransomware attack in October 2021 which caused them to lose an "account package database". A chartered accountant is now preparing accounts to December 2021 for audit, he said.
Hobson also maintains former president Swan was regularly briefed, kept informed of the sale process via email and "invited to most of the meetings relating to the project, but seldom chose to attend them".
As part of attempts to keep the RSA's doors open, an arrangement around 2015 was also brokered with up to eight members to loan the RSA thousands of dollars at interest. Some of these loans are understood to be up to $25,000, but others are far less.
Upon completion of the sale to Foodstuffs, they will be paid back, Hobson confirmed.
Foodstuffs head of public relations Emma Wooster confirmed to the Herald that when completed, the Point Chevalier RSA would own and operate their new clubrooms.
The new supermarket will be built across the RSA block and a neighbouring property, currently a car yard, which Foodstuffs has also bought.
"We've been wanting to serve the Point Chevalier community for some years, locals have been asking us when we're coming, but we found it challenging to find the right spot to build - so we were delighted when the opportunity came up for us to work with the RSA a couple of years ago," Wooster said.
"We've been granted resource consent and are looking forward to building a state-of-the-art development the Point Chev community can be proud of."
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