In the mist-filled morning hours of July 9, members of the Waihī Bowling club turned up to watch the end of an era, as their clubrooms were prepared for a relocation to the Recreation and Community Centre complex on the Baker St side of Morgan Park.
The bowling club has been located at 128 Kenny St since its beginnings in 1905. On May 8 the final game was bowled on the Kenny St greens. In the following weeks, the interior of the 1950s pavilion was cleared out and the building split into two pieces in preparation for its relocation.
By eight am on moving day, the first half of the building was on a trailer, heading across the field. It was followed by the second half on July 10. Over the next four weeks, the pieces will be reconnected and settled into their new location next to the netball building.
Gary Samson of the Sport’n’Action Charitable Trust said the building was to be connected to the netball building via an annex, to form the heart of the recreation centre.
“[It] will be renovated and formed into quite a nice spacious hub, which will be shared by all member sports,” he said.
“Stage two is to put showers and bits and pieces in it and rearrange the toilets. And then there’ll be sort of a third stage of sprucing it up, [but] we’ve got to modify the bones first.”
Former bowling club president Clare Boyd said the move has been almost a decade in the making.
“It’s quite a historic moment really. In 2015 we signed an agreement with Sport’n’Action, to move the building to Morgan Park beside the netball building, and an artificial green would be provided,” she said.
“Although we’re sad to be moving, we’re focusing on having a nice carpet green which will give us good playing facilities.
“We’ve got about 40 members, it’s not a big club at the moment and we’ve been restricted because of this impending move. I’ve been with the club for 11 years now and it’s been very hard to grow the club under those circumstances because there was always this question mark about what was happening and so, once we’re all settled and everything we’ll be able to grow the club much more positively.”
Several sports clubs use the Morgan Park Recreation and Community Centre facility, which already has new netball and tennis courts in place. The bowls turf is currently being constructed at the building’s new location, and the trust has plans to develop a second football field on the building’s old site.
Separate plans from the Waihī Community Forum Community Trust are also underway to develop an outdoor recreation hub at Morgan Park, which will include a pump track, revamped skate park, playground upgrade, community barbeque area, and exercise park. The community forum has so far received $150,000 from Hauraki District Council and $200,000 from the Lottery Community Facilities fund for the project.
