Sign In / Register
The new clubrooms will be larger than the current rooms, and will include a medical room, bunkrooms, boatshed and storage on the ground floor, with a restaurant, bar and meeting rooms upstairs. The watchtower will be positioned closer to the beach.
Good news came in twos for the Orewa Surf Club last week.In the week that officials heard that the club had won the right to host the 2018 NZ Junior Surf Lifesaving Championships, they also learned that their long-awaited resource consent for the new clubrooms on Orewa Beach had finally been approved.
Club chair John Chapman says that although there is still a lot of work to be done, particularly in terms of raising the estimated $7 million to turn a dream into a reality, the building could be in place by early 2019.
“If everything goes to plan, we’d like to start demolishing the present clubrooms immediately following the junior champs in March 2018,” he says.
One of the first steps now will be to employ a professional fundraiser to help model a financial plan.
“We’ve already had a number of builders and tradesmen offer to help ‘at cost’. There’s been a lot of support from the business community, which is very encouraging.”
Mr Chapman said it had cost the club roughly $200,000 to get this point.
“It’s been quite a frustrating process for all concerned, not just us but the Council planners as well. The legislation governing what can happen on public reserves is out-dated. Local politicians and the Local Board have been very supportive and it took their intervention to make it happen in the end.”
Mr Chapman stressed that the new building would be a community asset.
“The surf club is already an iconic destination and we just want to build on that. As woeful as the current premises are, they are still used by a number of non-surf related groups. Going forward, we want to build and broaden these relationships.”
Meanwhile, the Junior Championships are expected to attract upward of 1000 competitors for the four-day event.
“This will be one of the biggest sporting events on the Coast for about the last 20 years. We’ve been working on this for more than a year.”
The champs have traditionally been hosted at Mt Maunganui.
Mr Chapman believes Orewa’s demonstrated ability to host the Auckland Region Junior Surf Champs, a two-day event, which normally attracts up to 750 competitors, was one of the deciding factors.
“Plus, we had the support of Destination Orewa Beach, ATTED, the local MP and the Local Board. The organisers could see we had the community behind us.”
