Nga Puna Wai Sports Hub gets go-ahead

Concept art for the Nga Puna Wai Sports Hub

Christchurch City Council will get the ball rolling on a long-awaited sports hub, after Councillors today approved the development at Nga Puna Wai.

Nga Puna Wai will combine facilities for a number of sporting disciplines – including an athletics track, hockey turfs, outdoor tennis courts and sports fields – on a 32-hectare area of Nga Puna Wai, a reserve currently used mainly for livestock grazing and public recreation in southwest Christchurch.

The decision to proceed comes after a two-month special consultative procedure with 4725 submitters and public hearings with presentations from 26 submitters, which allowed Councillors and staff to consider all aspects of the proposal before making their final decision today (12 March).

“The Council’s consultation process demonstrated widespread support across the city for a sports hub at Nga Puna Wai – about 90 per cent of submitters were in favour,” says John Filsell, Recreation and Sports Unit Manager.

“Consultation also reinforced the need to keep local communities involved and engaged, especially over traffic and ecological issues,” he says.

“It’s great news for the whole city. A number of sports organisations were displaced by the earthquakes and have been crying out for facilities ever since, and today’s decision means we can start work in earnest. Nga Puna Wai will be an efficient way of doing things, it will let codes share facilities and it will give us the infrastructure we need to host national – and international – sports events,” Mr Filsell says.

“Now that we have the go-ahead, the next step is to get phase one of the development, which will include an athletics track, underway. Other facilities will be phased in gradually.”

The Council has committed $6.7 million towards the development of the athletics track and will work with sporting groups to determine their share of any financial contributions to the hub. As the plan proposes to create the hub over 10–30 years, the development of each component can be staged as required.

For more information, please visit www.ccc.govt.nz/NgaPunaWai

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