The Point Chevalier Memorial RSA Inc. Photo / Michael Craig
An already controversial deal to sell an Auckland RSA’s prime inner city land to supermarket chain Foodstuffs for about $10 million has been downscaled to no longer include new clubrooms for veterans and members.
The decision has upset longstanding Point Chevalier RSA members, with allegations of a lack of financial transparency about how RSA management decided to abandon the new clubroom project.
The sale of the Point Chevalier RSA site on Great North Rd in mid-2022 had been part of a plan to build a New World supermarket, which would incorporate a facility for a new RSA club on top of it, along with parking and commercial office space.
The Point Chevalier RSA has been in a dire financial state for years and a vote by RSA members to sell a 4000sq m block of land it owns on Great North Rd was conducted on May 15, 2022. The block was valued by Auckland Council at $6.1 million in June 2021 but it is understood to have been independently valued much higher - close to $10m.
However, it has emerged that sometime in late-September this year around 100 Point Chev RSA members were called to a special meeting to vote on whether to opt out of the new clubroom deal.
It is understood that at this meeting a case was made by the Point Chev RSA management the club would end up in debt after the build of the new clubrooms above the supermarket and the project should be abandoned. Instead, the club would just receive money directly for the sale.
Following this meeting one of the Point Chev committee members quit due to a lack of transparency over the proceedings.
“That’s all we knew, that we’d be cashless by the time we got to the new build, and we’ll probably end up owing money,” one RSA member said.
“No clarity, and during the special meeting it felt like it was a vote under duress: ‘Hey, if you don’t vote like this we’re going to liquidate, we’re going to lose everything’.”
RSA national director Murray Hobson confirmed to the Herald there would no longer be clubrooms built on top of the Point Chev New World.
“The clubrooms aren’t going ahead because members made that decision. And in terms of what’s happened in the club, what we did was to close the hospitality business and the RSA will remain with its veteran support and so on,” Hobson said.
“Commercially, the hospitality business didn’t stack up.”
Foodstuffs spokesperson Emma Wooster confirmed to the Herald the RSA had decided against the initial plan to build the new clubrooms.
“Last year the co-op entered into an agreement with the local RSA, who at the time owned the land. As part of the agreement, Foodstuffs North Island were going to build new clubrooms for the RSA as part of the redevelopment of the site and the RSA were going to operate these,” Wooster said.
“The RSA has since decided new clubrooms on the site isn’t the way to go for them and requested the agreement go ahead without the clubroom element.”
Foodstuffs would not provide details of whether it had now increased its payment to the RSA for the land given the construction costs of the new clubrooms would no longer be needed.
“While the details of the financial agreement are confidential an equitable outcome has been agreed between Point Chevalier RSA and Foodstuffs North Island. We’re very much looking forward to bringing the Point Chevalier community a brand-new New World,” Wooster said.
However, a second Point Chev RSA member who is familiar with the details of the decision to pull out of the new clubrooms was critical of the lack of transparency from Hobson and other RSA management.
“Now they won’t tell us how much they’re going to be left with,” the member said last week.
“They’ve completely cocked the whole thing up. We’re closing the doors on Sunday [October 8] and that’s the end of the Point Chev RSA. It’s gone.
“The land’s gone, everything is gone. So, New World’s going ahead with their project. It’s just that we won’t have our Point Chev RSA on top like we were initially going to have.
“The whole thing’s been a complete shambles.”
Hobson was not prepared to comment on the financial arrangements of the new deal with Foodstuffs when questioned if the RSA would receive more money for the sale given Foodstuffs was no longer obliged to build the extensive clubroom.
The RSA national director also disputed there was any controversy to the initial sale of the Great North Rd site in mid-2022, despite former Point Chev RSA president Neville Swan being dissatisfied about the finances of the sale.
“I was kept in the dark pretty much with the process of going through the whole set up as far as the [new] building was concerned. Meetings were actually held behind my back, pretty much,” Swan claimed in 2022.
Swan, was concerned the value of the new RSA clubrooms Foodstuffs was building was nowhere near equal to the land value.
“There is a discrepancy as far as I’m concerned where the value of the land is worth $12m,” Swan claimed.
“I was not happy with that either. Murray Hobson - I pulled him up a couple of times, because I was the president.
“I said, ‘You obviously don’t need a president, you’re quite happy running it yourself’ so I have just resigned. My vice-president then lasted two months [as the new president].”
The Point Chev RSA also had three separate presidents over the past three years.
Speaking this week, one of the two Point Chev RSA members the Herald spoke to lamented the loss to the local community of having no club rooms to congregate.
“There are many unhappy, nowhere left… nowhere to go. Now we’ve got to go and find somewhere else to hang out. There are so many, so many, the last night was packed. The most packed I’d seen it in years.
“There’s no alternative. They’re going to take money and then it’s going to be up to the committee and the board to decide what to do with the money.”
Four RSA members present at the May 15, 2022, annual general meeting were also frustrated at what they described as the lack of financial detail provided by Hobson before they had to vote.
“It was almost like a scare tactic. Like ‘Oh, if we don’t sell now, we will be liquidating, and all the funds will just go to the RSA in Wellington to distribute’,” one member claimed.
“It was the oddest AGM I’ve ever had in regards to the selling of the building. We had to take their word for it, there were no financial reports, nothing.”
A source within the management of the club told the Herald that financial records had not been properly kept for the past two or three years. Swan also claimed this.
“It’s the strangest arrangement I’ve ever come across. There’s no finances disclosed,” an RSA source familiar with the bookkeeping of the branch told the Herald.
But Hobson disputed all the allegations levelled at him.
“It is not true the members were told during the meeting that if they did not agree to sell the land to Foodstuffs for the new development the club would be liquidated,” Hobson said.
“I was asked how long the RSA could remain open and trading if the members decided not to proceed with the development and I replied, in my opinion, it could be as short as two weeks if there was no improvement in patronage. Although this may have been hard for the members, who have made these allegations, to hear, in my opinion, it was a truthful response.”
Hobson also denied financial records hadn’t been kept at the Point Chev RSA and says the club suffered a ransomware attack in October 2021 which caused it to lose an “account package database”. A chartered accountant is now preparing accounts to December 2021 for audit, he said in July 2022.
In August, the Herald reported, the national RSA office was now urging clubs to consider how closely their actions aligned with the ethos of the Royal New Zealand Returned and Services’ Association, as it was set up 107 years ago.
It was a measure being taken by the national office through a “warrant of fitness” study of the accounts and membership of the independent local clubs across the country.
Former two-star general Martyn Dunne is now chairman of the board and - along with patron Sir Wayne “Buck” Shelford - wants the RSA to be less about cheap booze and food and more about supporting those who served New Zealand.
Dunne said the club-by-club check had the national RSA body studying financial accounts posted by local clubs to the publicly-accessible Incorporated Societies Register.
Wayne Morris at the Pt Chevalier RSA bristled at the prospect of the national body issuing instructions to the independent local clubs.
“To be honest, Wellington is probably looking for our money. As far as I’m concerned, they can get stuffed until it had been put to members.”
Morris said it was understood the RSA existed to support veterans. He said of its 380 members, about 15-20 were veterans who were “rarely” seen because of their age. “Because they can’t get to the club.”
Tom Dillane is an Auckland-based journalist covering local government and crime as well as sports investigations. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is deputy head of news.
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