Hard News: Park Life
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Thank you for your post Russell. I saw this Campbell Live item and thought
1. This is a very one-sided presentation. Why aren't we hearing from other members of the affected community who don't play golf?
2. That is a mighty big piece of recreational land surrounded by rapidly growing and intensifying population areas. Surely someone (preferably the local board) should be thinking about what is the best use of this land for nearby residents, rather than just putting one's fingers in one's ears and chanting "change is bad"?
3. It's been a long long time since I lived in Christchurch so please correct me, but: back in the 60s and 70s you could cycle or walk through the golf course in Hagley Park. In other words there was no issue with mixed use.
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Emma Hart, in reply to
3. It’s been a long long time since I lived in Christchurch so please correct me, but: back in the 60s and 70s you could cycle or walk through the golf course in Hagley Park. In other words there was no issue with mixed use.
Well the golf course isn't physically separated in any way from the rest of Hagley Park, so you couldn't feasibly keep people out, and I used to walk through it (the actual golf course) all the time in the 90s. The only deterrent was the sudden and apparently random use of sprinklers.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Chamberlain (and Takapuna) are special in that they bring golf to the masses, anybody with a borrowed set of clubs can just rock up and queue for a Tee off unlike most other courses on the Auckland isthmus.
Let's be specific here. It's unique in that you can play there without a membership of any club anywhere. But most golf clubs do allow non-members to play, so long as they are with a member, and they allow members from other clubs to play too. The barrier to playing golf on most courses is very low.
Furthermore, the advantages of being in the middle of the city were mitigated by the huge queues, to the point where it would often be quicker to drive to a country course than to queue up to play at Chamberlain. Also, as a course to play on, one had to contend with the fact that most of the people on there didn't know how to play, so it could take a really long time to complete a round as the large groups in front searched for the balls, and with the fact that people behind you might be similarly unaware of the rules and quite likely hit the ball through the middle of you from time to time. I remember the welt one guy I played with got when a ball hit him right in the sternum there.
So it wasn't really all that and a bag of chips after all. Good for tourists. Not really quite so good for anyone else.
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BenWilson, in reply to
I believe Avondale is ahead in the decades-long queue for that, as is Otahuhu.
I didn't get any sense of optimism from the headmaster at my kids' school that the project to build the pool was going anywhere fast. Seems like council is blocking it more than facilitating it at the moment. Pity - he had the funds to build it when my eldest started there, and now it looks likely that he'll be finished before anything even happens at all. So currently, they travel over to Mt Albert for the few swimming lessons they get every year. Pools seem to be highly political beasts, projects that swell into unmanageable beasts very quickly. A small pool would have made a huge difference to the decile 3 kids there, many of whom never really get to go swimming. But it's either a massive communally available center, or nothing.
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BenWilson, in reply to
A pool, Parnell style but heated for year round use, would be fantastic though.
Also worth noting that there is a very big heated pool complex not far from Chamberlain park already, at Mt Albert Grammar.
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I live near Fowlds Park which is on the other side of St Lukes Road from Chamberlain Golf Course and has a planned upgrade which will drastically change the integration between the lower and upper fields (replacing some of the sloping bank with a retaining wall). The upgrade is required because Eden/Albert simply does not have the number of fields to support the local population.
So I see the proposals for modify Chamberlain in that context, greatest good and all that. And as a cyclist, it would be cool to be able to ride through the golf course.
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Steve Curtis, in reply to
A pool, Parnell style but heated for year round use, would be fantastic though.
Mt Albert has its pool, yes heated for year round use.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Snap. It's an excellent facility. 25 meter pool with moving bottom so good for swimming, waterpolo, underwater hockey, water walking etc. Then there's the recreational area with pools of several temperatures, fountains, periodic simulated wave activity, spas, and the sauna and steam rooms. And particularly beloved of my youngest, the hydroslide.
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BenWilson, in reply to
back in the 60s and 70s you could cycle or walk through the golf course in Hagley Park. I
Was there any kind of guidelines at all about that? Because riding a bike across a fairway where people are teeing off sounds like a recipe for someone to get seriously hurt.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
I live near Fowlds Park which is on the other side of St Lukes Road from Chamberlain Golf Course and has a planned upgrade which will drastically change the integration between the lower and upper fields (replacing some of the sloping bank with a retaining wall). The upgrade is required because Eden/Albert simply does not have the number of fields to support the local population.
This is a table from the September 2014 Longdill report on Auckland sportsfield capacity – looking at the predicted shortfall by 2025. Central Auckland has the biggest problem – and you're right, the area around the golf course is the worst of it. It does put the current use of the whole 32ha as a golf course in some context.
The community board isn’t just making this stuff up.
PS: There seems to be some suggestion that redeveloping Chamberlain will make the radical surgery on Fowlds Park unnecessary.
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Sports Field Demand and Supply 2014 Final.pdf
The Longdill report itself is here.
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bmk, in reply to
Was there any kind of guidelines at all about that? Because riding a bike across a fairway where people are teeing off sounds like a recipe for someone to get seriously hurt.
When I lived in Chch. my flatmate got hit by a golf ball walking across the Hagley Park golf course, this was in 2000. He wasn't seriously hurt but he was hurt and pissed off about it. I think he wasn't impressed either when we told him it was clearly karma and he must've deserved it since such a thing wouldn't just happen by chance.
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Mikaere Curtis, in reply to
Thanks, that really does put it in perspective.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Some has to:
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You can walk across the Old Course at St Andrews if you want to get to the beach...
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Matt Pitt, in reply to
Yes - I live pretty much one street south of Chamberlain Park, and to be able to ride through it to access the Northwestern Cycleway would be amazing. I'd never have to run the gauntlet of St Lukes Rd ever again.
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Matt Pitt, in reply to
I live only a street away, and it was years before we discovered it by accident as well. It's a great wee spot with a cool playground for the little monkey - shame about the nose-curling funk that comes out of the stormwater/sewage vent right in the middle of it.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Yes – I live pretty much one street south of Chamberlain Park, and to be able to ride through it to access the Northwestern Cycleway would be amazing. I’d never have to run the gauntlet of St Lukes Rd ever again.
My thought too.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Because riding a bike across a fairway where people are teeing off sounds like a recipe for someone to get seriously hurt.
Welcome to Missing Links
where 'Fore!' play
never goes worng...
or
Perspex tunnel? -
Sacha, in reply to
Seems like council is blocking it more than facilitating it at the moment.
They've been doing that for decades. Rather spend the money on sand for the Eastern Bays beaches, etc.
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Sacha, in reply to
The only deterrent was the sudden and apparently random use of sprinklers
brilliant in a Norwester
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Chamberlain (and Takapuna) are special in that they bring golf to the masses, anybody with a borrowed set of clubs can just rock up and queue for a Tee off unlike most other courses on the Auckland isthmus.
And that's very nice as far as it goes -- I remember many a happy Sunday afternoon in my youth with Dad hacking around the Hutt Park public golf course a long way back in the day. But sorry, I really can't get terribly upset about public land being re-purposed for public use.
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Peter Haynes, in reply to
Have to correct you again. Actually, there are two clubs and they're both private. The men's club has been on the park for 74 years. The Chamberlain Park Ladies Goilf Club was inaugurated in 1986. Given that you've got so many things wrong in fact, perhaps you'd consider withdrawing the invective like "Bantustan" that does nothing at all to improve the quality of the discussion.
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Mikaere Curtis, in reply to
I ride along St Lukes regularly, and I'm not sure about this gamut to which you refer. You do mean the bit between Linwood Ave and the cycleway ? Where there is a cycle lane ? Or there's the footpath (I use the footpath on the eastern side of St Lukes Rd if I'm heading towards town on the cycleway).
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Peter Haynes, in reply to
Russell, some people are questioning the figures. (Yes, they're the ones who don't want to see certain sportsfields "upgraded" to artificial turf.) However, the figures are consistent with what the sports clubs tell us about juniors not being able to play, etc, so I have no doubt that they reflect reality to a large degree.
Julian Lee turned up at the open day we held yesterday at the park to beat the story up some more. He had the audacity to say that people had told him the first story was balanced. Hard not to laugh. Is this what television in this country has come to?
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