Papamoa lifesavers plan new clubhouse

Tauranga's youngest and fastest growing surf lifesaving club is planning to build a new clubhouse to cope with a membership expected to reach a thousand in the next few years.
Papamoa Surf Lifesaving Club has outgrown its cramped and poorly laid out clubhouse and wants to replace it with a modern building with sweeping views up and down the beach.
Planning challenges face the 20-year-old club before it can apply for consent to build on the dunes beside the current clubhouse, although president Matthew Pickering is hopeful the obstacles can be overcome.
All going well, the 20-year-old club will be in its new building within five years.
Membership has grown from 155 to  more than 640 in seven years, with a lot of effort going into building up junior membership which now stands at 330 children aged  7 to 13.
Mr Pickering unveiled the plans to a public hearing this week on the natural environment provisions of the council's draft City Plan.
He said the club's vision was a building that better fitted the environment in terms of its impact on the natural character of the coastline.
The club's head coach Kurt Wilson told the Bay of Plenty Times that the club had the largest patrol area in New Zealand, covering 14km of coastline along nearly the whole length of Papamoa Beach Rd.
 Its 150 volunteer lifeguards were rostered for weekend duties from Labour Weekend to Easter, with one patrol responsible for the main swimming beach and two others roaming on quad bikes.
Mr Wilson said the continuing growth of Papamoa meant they were confidently predicting the club would reach  1000 members in the next few years.
The club's planning advisor Richard Coles told council that the cramped clubhouse no longer met the needs of the club or the other community organisations which used the building.
The club was anxious that the special ecological area proposed for the dunes surrounding the existing clubhouse did not preclude a resource consent application being lodged for the new building.
The new clubhouse will not occupy the same footprint as the old building. With construction already subject to a large number of controls, including the coastal erosion protection zone, the club needed the assurance that the new building would not be a prohibited or non-complying activity in the special ecological area.
Mr Coles said the council planning controls were generally accepting of surf clubs needing to be located adjacent to the beach.