At last - A Sports House just for us

Sport Thought with Brent Eastwood

A significant milestone in the relatively short history of Sport Northland will be reached tomorrow when the ASB Northland Sports House at Kensington Park is opened by the Minister of Sport and Recreation, the Hon. Murray McCully.

The idea of housing Sport Northland in the same office as a host of Regional Sports Organisations (RSOs) has been around for a while now – in fact in the mid 1990s when Sport Northland was thinking about the redevelopment of what is now the ASB Leisure Centre, a sports house was central to the master plan re-design of the buildings.

However, as often occurs with redevelopments of existing buildings, funding and other priorities had to be taken into consideration, and consequently the sports house idea was put on the back burner until the redevelopment of the ASB Leisure Centre was complete in 2002.

Sport Northland then set about trying to find a suitable location elsewhere on Kensington Park to site the sports house, and after three different locations were ultimately unsuccessful, the current location above the Northland Table Tennis Centre was agreed on in 2008.

Once the site was confirmed with Table Tennis Northland, attention was turned to how to fund the redevelopment. The Board of Trustees, who had been very prudent from those early days by creating a building reserve with annual financial surpluses of the trust, quickly agreed to a substantial contribution from Sport Northland.

This enabled an application to be made to the ASB Community Trust, and, particularly with the recession starting to hit, we were very pleased to receive one of the few big grants made by them in 2009. Pub Charity then also agreed to a substantial grant as a contribution towards the completion of the facility, and this was followed by smaller grants from Oxford Sports Trust and the NZ Community Trust, while long-time Sport Northland partner ASB confirmed their naming rights sponsorship of the new building.

The result is good news for some of Northland’s small to medium RSOs. Those to confirm that the new sports house will be their office base right from opening day include Squash Northland, Golf Northland, Bowls NZ, Northland Suns Basketball, Parafed Northland and the Northtec Sport and Recreation programme.

When circumstances in their administration set-up allow, there is also commitment from Swimming Northland, Northern Rugby League, Bike Northland and Tennis Northland to also house administrators in the new facility. In addition, United Soccer One is already based in the wider ASB Leisure Centre building.

The benefits these sports will receive from day-to-day contact with not only Sport Northland but each other will be immense. For some, just having a base they can call home with a central storage facility is a step forward, with extra benefits such as access to a coaching resource centre as well as meeting and board rooms will just be a bonus.

Sport cannot happen without administrators and none of us can make it happen in isolation – my hope is the ASB Northland Sports House will attract even more sports organisations once these benefits begin to be felt by those who have taken up the initial offer.

Sport Thought with Brent Eastwood

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