New Mount Maunganui bowling greens ready for sowing
A milestone has been reached in the $8.8 million Mount Greens Sports project in Totara St, Mount Maunganui.
Two of the three bowling greens were yesterday handed over to Mount Greens Sports for final sowing to achieve a specialised broadleaf playing surface.
Bowlers will be
using the new greens, plus an artificial green closest to the new pavilion, in five months - less than a fortnight after the contractor Higgins Construction finishes work on November 30.
Yesterday's handing-over ceremony, for which Tauranga City Council member Murray Guy provided sparkling wine to toast the occasion, was an important milestone for the project, which will amalgamate three bowling and croquet clubs, and provide a $5.6 million clubhouse which will also be the new home for Club Mount Maunganui - formerly the Mount Cosmopolitan Club.
The handover took place after David Ormsby from the Sports Turf Institute certified that the correct levels had been achieved to begin sowing.
A variation of 14mm between the highest and lowest point of each bowling green was well within tolerances. With the grass already well through for the three croquet greens, bowling club greenkeepers Denis Grice and Noel Topp can now begin preparing the playing surface.
Mount Greens Sports chairman Ross Linney, who had been involved in the project since 2001, was delighted with how the project was coming together.
The project will free up large areas of reserves around the Mount's downtown occupied by the Mount Bowling Club and the Mount-Papamoa Croquet Club, and will give the council options on big blocks of land on the boundaries of Blake Park occupied by Club Mount Maunganui and the Cosmopolitan Bowling Club.
Signatories to the handover included the council's project manager Tony Bodger, Boffa Miskell's engineer to the contract Morne Hugo, Mr Ormsby and Mr Linney.
