Sports centre study approved

A bid to make Tauranga a training centre of choice for national and international athletes has been approved by the Tauranga City Council.

The council-owned organisation Bay Venues Ltd has been given approval to spend $95,000 exploring transforming the vacant former Mount Cossie Club building into a sporting centre of excellence.


Bay Venues CEO Gary Dawson, at the former Mount Maunganui Cosmopolitan Club building, which may become a sporting centre of excellence.

The money comes out of the Bay Venues budget approved in TCC's recently-adopted 2014/2015 annual plan.

TCC councillors voted unanimously in favour of Bay Venues Ltd carrying out the five-month feasibility study.

When approached before the meeting, Bay Venues CEO Gary Dawson told SunLive conceptual plans will be put together on which costings will be based, to see if the project has potential or not.

The former Mount Maunganui Cosmopolitan Club building has been empty for a couple of years.

The building is located in a 100-space carpark on a triangle of land on the corner of Miro and Kawaka streets, beside Blake Park.

It's located across the road from hockey turfs, adjacent to the Bay Cricket oval and the international class nets, as well as playing fields, netball and tennis courts.

'There are already a lot of sports that come to Tauranga for training camps and that type of thing, so we believe there is a potential market for us to tap into,” says Gary.

'But we want to make sure that we get the plans and do a good business case to see if it stacks up or not.

'It seems for a combination of reasons a worthwhile project, to at least have an early look at and to see whether it's feasible or not.”

TCC councillor Clayton Mitchell says it's a 'fantastic idea”.

Now the sevens are an Olympic sport, and their coach Sir Gordon Tichens is Tauranga-based, the Blake Park venue will be a fantastic place to locate them, says Clayton.

The Mount, Omanu and Papamoa surf clubs, which have an established history of training athletes for national and international competition, are also supporting the proposal.

'I fully support it and I look forward to the study coming out,” says Clayton.

TCC councillor Catherine Stewart asked why the proposal didn't appear in the recently-complete 2014-2015 Annual Plan process.

'Timing,” says Mayor Stuart Crosby.

The former Cosmopolitan Club building has been vacant since TCC bought it for $6.3 million in 2009 in an arrangement clearing the way for the nearby Mount Greens project.

The council called for proposals for the building last year, but nothing viable came from it.

The council bought two properties: 50 Miro St, which has a house on it, and 54 Miro Street, the 6308m2 Cosmopolitan Club site with 99 carparks and 2685m2 of floor space.

The main building was built in a number of stages. The older part of the building has a seismic rating of 22 per cent of the New Building Standard.

The newer part is 76 per cent. A detailed engineering report with cost estimated for improvements is to be ready by the end of July 2014.

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1 comment

95k!!!!

Posted on 26-07-2014 05:09 | By Sambo Returns

to explore an idea, while I am all in favour of the concept, why is not a 50/50 partnership explored between government funded sports and the Council?, or is this part of the exploration to find out how much sporting organisations will pay to use such a facility?.


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