Napier pool 'friends' poised for aquatic centre developments

The site of the Onekawa Aquatic Centre, an aerial photo from 2012, the Menin Rd entrance to the left. Photo / NZME

Napier pools action group Friends of Onekawa Aquatic Centre is zooming back into action to be ready to face whatever decisions are made as the issue comes back to the Napier City Council table this week.

But after almost two years close to hibernation, with a whole world changing in the meantime, it would probably consist of a Zoom meeting or a similar audio-visual link to discuss the issue as it unfolds.

The society was formed in May 2019 after the council under then Mayor Bill Dalton decided to build a new pools complex at a city-fringes site on the corner of Tamatea and Prebensen Drives, which the "Friends" said would be less accessible to users of the existing and more-central complex on the Maadi Rd side of Onekawa Park, in a block also bounded by Flanders Ave and housing off Gallipoli and Menin Rds.

The Friends went to the High Court for a judicial review of the process which had led to the April 2019 decision made on the casting vote of then acting-Mayor Faye White after councillors were split 6-all on whether to go ahead.

The poster which heralded the start of the Friend of Onekawa Aquatic Centre Society in mid 2019. Photo / NZME

It was a major issue at the 2019 Local Elections and while the Court, having halted letting of the contracts pending a review outcome, ruled in a decision released in May 2021 that the Council processes had been correct, the new Council of new mayor Kirsten Wise and five new members decided to go back to the public for consultation – the purpose of this Thursday's extraordinary meeting of the full-Council Sustainable Napier Committee.

Reports have preferred options for locating the aquatic centre elsewhere on Onekawa Park than the current site accessed from Maadi Rd, and on the Tamatea site, where, coincidentally harness racing horses were once trained by late councillor Ivan Wilson, whose name is synonymous with a lane-pool named after him in the Onekawa complex.

Friends spokesman John Wise said the society had remained alive in anticipation of the next phase, although it hadn't been meeting officially since mid-late 2020.

Following Monday's Council release of reports ahead of Thursday's meeting, he said: "The Friends of the Onekawa Aquatic Centre Society is following the Council's process with interest. There is a large volume of technical and economic data to be read and understood before we can comment further."