Roll up for bowling club apartments

An architect's impression of a new development of 14 apartments on the site of the Ponsonby Bowling Club. Photo / Supplied

Fourteen apartments, starting from $1.25 million, will be built on the Ponsonby Bowling Club site in Herne Bay in Auckland.

After six years of trying to get a scheme off the ground, building work is due to start this month and president John Ivory said the club would go into recess until around September next year, using a nearby club while its rooms were demolished and the site redeveloped.

The club would benefit from the scheme which required no capital injection but in return for the use of its land, would get two new greens - one artificial, one natural - to replace two existing natural greens, and clubrooms 30 per cent to 40 per cent larger than the current structure.

Only a beer garden would be lost, which Ivory said was not an issue because state-of-the-art sports facilities were being built.

Auckland's second-oldest sports club after Parnell's Auckland Bowling Club has wanted to redevelop its large site with spectacular views to the north over the harbour.

However, the finance collapse put an end to plans by Sports and Recreational Developments which around 2009 proposed 11 apartments.

But late last year, Location Management applied for resource consent to build the 14 apartments, two bowling greens, a new clubhouse and a basement level car park. Consent was granted around January.

A statement by Mark Weipers of Location Group, architect Kerry Avery, of Avery Team Architects, and real estate agent Patrick McCarthy, of Custom Residential, said freehold apartments at 105A Jervois Rd would be finished by July next year.

The apartment block will be called Vert and a spokesperson said owners would not have neighbours right next to them but would instead overlook the bowling greens.