Lancaster Park seats find new home at Te Puke's Murray Salt Stadium

Rex Olsen and Heather Salt have played a part in bringing seats from Lancaster Park to Murray Salt Stadium to replace the current stand.

A piece of Canterbury history is about to become part of Te Puke's Murray Salt Stadium.

Seats from Christchurch's Lancaster Park are this week being shipped to Tauranga. They will eventually end up at the home of Te Puke Sports, used to create a 350-plus seat covered stand.

The sports and recreation club applied to buy the seats from the earthquake-damaged stadium after Christchurch City Council advertised they were on sale in a project initiated by the Old Pirates.

When the seats were secured, Rick Hannay began the task of getting them to the Western Bay of Plenty.

Zespri shipping manager Mike Knowles' response to Hannay's request for help was swift, with shipping arranged through Oceanic Navigation's principals Bruce Nesbit and John Malyon.

Ocean Shipping also arranged for banana pallets to be made available from MG Marketing Christchurch, but these proved to be unsuitable and, again via Knowles at Zespri, larger milk powder pallets were donated by Fonterra.

Transport of the seats to Lyttelton has been provided free by Temuka Transport, and both Lyttelton and Tauranga ports have waived wharfage charges as have stevedoring fees from C3 Stevedoring.

The seats are due to arrive at the Port of Tauranga aboard the Takeshige San today.

Hannay says that without such wide-ranging support, it would not have been economically feasible to get the seats from Lancaster Park to Te Puke.

"Te Puke Sports has been greatly privileged in receiving such support and sincerely thanks all of those companies and individuals that have pitched in to help us," he says.

"Without this generous assistance, this project would not have been possible. Moving part of Lancaster Park to Te Puke is no mean feat.

"While the project is not yet completed, it is timely and necessary to salute those who have pitched in to make all this possible."

Hannay believes much of the support is because of the club's contribution to the community with junior, premier and golden oldies rugby as well as a growing netball section.

The seats will replace current seating at Murray Salt Stadium which, although only about five years old, is no longer suitable. A structure will be constructed to support the new seating which will be covered.

Rex Olsen inspected the seats before they were bought and has been charged with designing the new structure. Hannay and Olsen are unsure whether the Lancaster Park seats will be in place for the start of the 2018 rugby season.

Heather Salt was responsible for liaising with Christchurch City Council to buy the seats, and her and the club's enthusiasm for the project led the city council to "throw in" an extra 35 seats.

The club is seeking the community's support with each seat "for sale" at $100. So far 210 of the seats have been "sold".