Plans to carve up Auckland's Chamberlain Park Golf Course to make it available to more sporting codes and the wider public are still under review. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Plans to carve up Auckland's Chamberlain Park Golf Course to make it available to more sporting codes and the wider public are still under review. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Two new sports fields planned as part of the Chamberlain Park Golf Course redevelopment could cost up to $15 million, official documents have revealed.
But the local board's chair says that cost is a "worst-case scenario" based on buying in fill, and the final cost is likely to be much lower.
The 18-hole golf course in Mt Albert is owned and operated by Auckland Council. The Albert-Eden Local Board wants to redevelop the course to open it to the wider community - cutting the golf course to nine holes and adding a new aquatic centre, playground, cycleways and two artificial turf sports fields.
But an investment summary presented to the Albert-Eden Local Board last year showed the sports field costs ballooning due to the difficulty of building on the course's rolling terrain, which lies over volcanic rock.
Filling the gaps and building flat platforms for the two fields to sit on could cost $7 million, the summary said.
The fields themselves are expected to cost another $8 million.
By comparison, two artificial sports fields at College Rifles Rugby Club in Remuera cost just $2 million to build in 2009.
Auckland Council has agreed to pay the $8 million from its sport investment and development fund, as part of plans to make more of the city's sports fields usable during the wet winter months.
But late last year the board was still seeking funding for the underlying works, according to the documents obtained by the lobby group Save Chamberlain Park under official information laws.
The local board was "surprised" at the high cost of the proposed earthworks, according to an email sent last October from local board member Graeme Easte to an unnamed person.
The person responded that the main cost would be paying for about 66,000m3 of fill, which would cost $3.3m at $50 per cubic metre.
Two new sports fields are among the amenities the local board wants built as part of a planned redevelopment at Chamberlain Park in Auckland. Image / Auckland Council
However board chair Peter Haynes told the Herald using fill from earthworks at project like the Central Interceptor and Central Rail Link would significantly cut the cost of the sports fields.
"It is extremely unlikely that we'd ever pay that much money ... in fact we are saving a huge amount of money if we put sports fields on Chamberlain Park because we won't have to buy other land."
There is still debate over whether there is a shortage of sports fields in the local board area.
The local board wants the golf course reconfigured and a new driving range built by 2020, and the sports fields and path network completed by 2023. Those dates may be pushed out as the redevelopment plans are under judicial review at the High Court.
Save Chamberlain Park chairman Geoff Senescall said $15 million would be a "ridiculously huge expenditure" for two sports fields which he believed were unnecessary.
"What checks and balances are there in the system that allows the council to green light funding for sporting resources that are not needed - and at the expense of a well-used and needed public golf course?" Senescall said.
If the council had money to spare it could be used to weatherproof a larger number of other sports fields, he said.
