Call for community spirit to revitalise Takahue Hall

Takahue Hall, slowly sinking into disrepair.

The seven women who make up the Takahue Hall committee are adamant that the hall will not become totally redundant under their watch.

But the brave face concealed a stark reality.

On Monday the committee's bank balance was about $20. It needed to find $1700 to cover fixed costs - phone, power, insurance) over the next two months, $10,000 a year just to keep going, without increasingly urgent maintenance.

The committee memberswill be sizzling sausages outside The Warehouse in Kaitaia on November 25 and December 9 - but that is not the long-term solution.

The hall needed to be used, and no one wanted to hire it. Takahue simply didn't care what happened to the hall,or not enough to help keep it going, or to pay to use it.

The committee had appealed to the community without success.

"We've done heaps," Ashlee Holder said. They had staged discos, hosted pot luck dinners attracting 25-30 people on a good night, less than a dozen on a bad one, and put flyers in 180 letter boxes. Nothing happened.

"The community support just isn't there," Dawn Preece said. The hall's immediate community is now larger than ever, but the newcomers did not have the same community spirit as their predecessors.

Hiring what Maxine Wild described as the biggest hall for miles cost $450, which the committee said was cheap. The hirer got a complex that could seat 200, including a fully-equipped commercial kitchen and a bar, with 200 of everything - except glasses, which had been pinched, in dribs and drabs.

It was an ideal venue for weddings, funerals, birthday parties and had once been very popular. Changing attitudes towards drinking and driving might have had an impact, but that was not the whole explanation.

While the local population had grown, rugby, netball and the Women's Institute had all folded. Indoor bowls was hanging on but now attracted only four or five people at a time.

Yet some local people, who made no contribution, wanted to hire the hall at mate's rates.
"It's already cheap," Mrs Wild said, "and every dollar we can earn is needed. Even committee members don't get reduced rates.

If the worst came to the worst, they said, they would lock the doors and walk away, but they were loathe to even contemplate that. The community had built a hall after its predecessor was destroyed by fire, and continued to own it. The community just didn't seem to want it.

It attracted the attention of a tagger recently, another bad sign. The good news was that one local had dobbed in another, and the tagging "mysteriously" disappeared. There is no money in the bank to fix a window that had been scratched.

Nor can the committee afford to fix the spouting that is leaking and slowly but surely rotting the terrace, or to repair the playground.

"We're not sitting around waiting for money to roll in," Bronwyn Travers said.

"But we won't be able to apply for funding from various sources until February or March, and we have to do something now."

"Everyone loves the Takahue Hall. That's why we're here," Mrs Holder said.

"Any support that anyone can give us would be amazing.

"It's a beautiful hall - such a waste."