Maketū Rotary start ball rolling on community centre refurb

Ready to go. Maketu Rotary members and volunteers ready to start work on dismantling the interior of the Maketu Community Centre.

Work on one of Maketū Rotary Club's most ambitious projects began last week.

Maketū Community Centre, next to the fire station, was a house in a previous life, and the club is now in the process of making it much more user friendly to the groups that use it - and making it more attractive to new users.

Guiding the project is Rotarian David Campbell.

''As a result of our use and awareness of others in the community who use it, we realised that the community had this really valuable asset that was underutilised, in large part because the building itself does not have much flexibility,'' he says.

''And so we saw an opportunity to do another community service project along with some of the others that we've done over the years.

''We saw it as an opportunity to jump in and do something that would make that building more functional and that really sort of snowballed from some small ideas to what it is now, a rather large one, which is to totally renovate the entire interior of the building,''

David says the plans will result in a building that will have double the usable area with an upgraded kitchen and disability accessible toilets.

The early work of stripping out the building's interior has started.

''That's the first part of it. That will all be done by volunteers and then they will also be involved with things like insulating the building. But then we turn it over to tradespeople who will do the interior construction, rewiring, and plumbing and then flooring."

The club members and volunteers will then go back in to do the painting.

The Acorn Foundation and Maketū Rotary Club have each contributed $5000 with Western Bay of Plenty District Council contributing the bulk of the finance - $50,000 - ''thanks to the direct involvement of the community board''.

''That's kind of important as the community board was the driving force behind getting that money through, so I'd like to give to our local board as much credit as possible.''

David says it's difficult to say exactly when the work will be completed.

''We're still crossing our fingers that we'll be able to complete it by the end of the year.

"That's all contingent upon getting materials which is a well documented issue at the moment.''