Indoor sports centre looks for new home

The Hawke's Bay Indoor Sports Centre's lights go out for the last time on Saturday, with business owner Andrew Huxford hoping a new home can soon be found. Photo/Doug Laing

An iconic centre for indoor sports at both social and upper levels in Napier is looking for a new home after a change of plans for its purpose-built stadium in the Pandora industrial area.

Unable to come to an agreement with the owners, lessee Andrew Huxford, who with his wife owns the Action Hawke's Bay Indoor Sports Centre, will draw stumps at the stadium in Thames St for the last time tomorrow.

But he's urgently seeking a new site, with hundreds of people still lining for their weekly or in some cases almost nightly fill of indoor cricket, indoor soccer or indoor netball.

He certainly isn't ready to bail out completely, as he tries to meet the goal of providing a physical sports outlet for anyone, ranging from the workplace social team through to such people as the 10 New Zealand indoor cricket representatives who've honed their skills on the turfs of the three netted courts.

A former national league soccer player who is now also deputy chairman of league franchise Hawke's Bay United, he hopes he can also form a trust or foundation to take the indoor sports into a new era.

The centre opened in 1985, built especially to bring indoor cricket to Hawke's Bay in the name of the Indoor Cricket Arena (ICA), an Auckland-based franchisor partnering with Hawke's Bay cricket and rugby legend Blair Furlong.

He ran it for three years until he took up a Napier-based position running Central Districts cricket, including being match manager for several day-night and five-day test matches at McLean Park.

The stadium became very popular for business house cricket leagues, and indoor netball with similar appeal was just starting as Furlong moved on to greener turfs.

"I'd only just put the hoops up," he said.

It had since had several other operators, including Huxford who took over about two years ago and who, with plenty of indication there's still a queue for the indoor team sports options the centre provided, had big plans.

While out-day is December 12, the end of current leagues has been brought forward by three weeks to enable the premises to be stripped of its nets, lighting and "turf right down to the concrete", which will be stored in a container Huxford has bought for the purpose, pending the chance to relocate.

If nothing happens, he says people will lose their jobs "and a community will lose what for some is their second home.

"It means that a group of us are more motivated than ever to find another location to re-start Hawke's Bay Indoor Sports and continue to provide the current and further offerings that we have in our plan for our community," he said.