Posts by Peter Haynes
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How strange. Some of Hooton's more recent commentary was beginning to sound reasonably sane.
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Hard News: Park Life, in reply to Russell Brown,
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Hard News: Park Life, in reply to BenWilson,
Ben, the figure of 51,000 rounds for the 2013-2014 financial year comes from the operator of the course. But, as I said, noone keeps figures on the number of individual people playing on the course (or any other course as far as I know). The claim about the course being the most popular in Australasia is easily shown to be false. From a report on public courses in Melbourne: "Survey respondents reported for the twelve month period to end December 2013 that approximately 657,000 rounds were recorded for the year. On a facility basis, rounds averaged approximately 38,600, ranging from a low of 9,000 rounds to a high of over 75,000 rounds." Elsewhere in the report statistics put Chamberlain at just below the 75th percentile for the Melbourne public courses. Good, but far from most popular.
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Hard News: Park Life, in reply to Glenn Pearce,
Glenn, We have been doing just that. But (1) not all schools want to open up their grounds to the public (2) grass sportsfields turn into mud very quickly so any partnerships require putting artificial grass on the fields and the current cost of artificial for a single sportsfield is $1.5m, not including lights (3) in practice the possibilities from such partnerships won't solve the problem. That said, we agreed to another sportsfield partnership with AGS earlier this year.
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Hard News: Park Life, in reply to Russell Brown,
We can only guestimate how many people use the course. Campbell Live interviewed someone who plays five times a week. So 250 is the bottom number and 20,000 probably the top number. But, the Board has already taken a lot of flack from the close neighbours of Fowlds Park for trying to increase the capacity of the sportsfields there for the benefit of rugby league and softball players amoungst others who use the fields. I don't think we'd be looking at any further development there any time soon.
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Hard News: Park Life, in reply to matthew,
Mathew, we've spent countless hours looking at options to increase sportsfield capacity. There are few options in our area, or surrounding areas, thanks to the level of development, the small size of parks, the proximity of residential neighbours and so on. We've actually had to drop some plans to "upgrade" sportsfields (e.g. Warren Freer Park) because of this. Even had we been able to sand carpet or place artificial turf on all possible sportsfields in our area, we would still have a huge shortfall, the biggest in the Auckland region, in ten years time. Believe me, we did not take the decision to look at wider options for Chamberlain lightly. PS As a cricketer you should know that Auckland Cricket say that they are 12 pitches short on the isthmus now (and this will increase with population growth).
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Hard News: Park Life, in reply to Sean C,
The Open Day was only ever advertised as an open day, because that is all it was ever intended to be. You may have assumed that it was to be a meeting, but that was never intended to be a meeting. Again, you're making an assumption that it will be redeveloped. The Board has worked long and hard considering possible "upgrades" of existing sportsfields to increase capacity, and looking to partner with schools (e.g. AGS). But even if we do every the upgrade possible (Fowlds Park and Nixon Park are on the cards, Gribblehurst Park is possible and we have no control over Eden Park), then we would still have the biggest shortfall in the Auckland region in ten years time. And our neighbours Waitemata and Orakei Local Boards are almost as badly off, so it's not a matter of driving over the border, unless you consider Glen Innes close to Mt Albert (I don't). It's not about the times of use. Grass sportsfields have around 20 hours/per week max, then they turn to mud in Auckland's climate; artificial fields are providing up to 50 hours and more. In 2010, the lack of sportsfields was an election issue. That said, it's not just about lack of accessible open space for local residents, or sportsfield capacity, as many of the comments on this post have discussed. Happy to discuss it with you further, if you're not yet convinced that this isn't a half-baked idea. Believe me, I don't want to spoil anyone's golf.
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Hard News: Park Life, in reply to Russell Brown,
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? -
Hard News: Park Life, in reply to Steve Curtis,
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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I'm always impressed by how well informed you are Russell. This time you score 10/10. To answer some of Steve Curtis's points... The carparking shown is part of a *proposal* that came from officers and has absolutely nothing to do with Western Springs stadium, or the loss of a relatively small number of carparks some distance away for the motorway works (assuming that happens). Rather than a loss of trees, there would be an increase under the proposals, as the area on the western side of the park reverted to wilderness with native plantings and wetlands. (That area would also form part of a corridor for birds from Roy Clements treeway through the Meola Creek path.) Playing fields are not ontorious deadzones in areas like ours. Albert-Eden has the largest shortfall in sportsfield capaicity (as well as the least amount of open space per capita) in the entire Auckland Region, as much as the whole north and south of Auckland put together. And please don't ask about neighbouring areas--they're next on the list for shortfall in sportsfield capacity. Any sportsfields we build will get an awful lot of use. More so in the future with the planned or proposed intensification (including Unitec, which has already priced ARU out of its site). Thanks for the opportunity Russell to correct some of the damage done by the unbalanced Campbell Live report.