Sonya Bateson: Tauranga Domain debate - I’m embracing my small-town mentality

A protest in March attracted up to 400 people that were also against the proposed stadium. Photo / Maryana Garcia

Opinion

You can take the girl out of the small town, but you can’t take the small town out of the girl.

From birth until reaching those two digits known rather optimistically as “adulthood”, I lived in a town where every face was familiar, even if I didn’t know that person’s name. A town with no traffic lights or passing lanes, but plenty of roundabouts, where the annual Christmas in the Park was the biggest event on the town calendar.

Moving to Hamilton for university study was a culture shock almost as great as if I’d moved to another country. I can’t begin to describe how weird it was to walk down a street and not recognise a single face. It took a long time to adjust to, longer than I’d like to admit.

Then there was the novelty of having things to do. Weekends weren’t just for meeting up with friends and hanging out at someone’s house. There were places to go. Bars. Attractions. Shopping trips. Events.

I remember the first event I attended clearly. We uni students got free tickets to a Chiefs game at Stadium Waikato. Awful seats, mind. A patch of grass behind the goalposts. But it was so much fun. We all dressed up in black, red, and yellow, nursed plastic cups of expensive beer and cheered until our throats ached.

By the end of that year in Hamilton, this small-town girl felt almost metropolitan. I had eaten Mexican food and knew how to catch a bus. I could navigate traffic lights and change lanes with ease. And I’d gotten used to having stuff to do.

That second year of “adulthood”, I attended my first concert. A music festival, in fact. Big Day Out at Mount Smart Stadium. What an experience.

Then there was Raggamuffin at Rotorua International Stadium, Tarnished Frocks and Divas at Baypark, One Love at Tauranga Domain, and more.

A small-town girl’s dream, really.

It’s all part of the fun of living in a city.

But – and there’s always a but, isn’t there? – being able to host amazing events means we need to have appropriate facilities, which means taking up precious land to build venues that may only see occasional use.

Where do we draw the line between protecting existing spaces and allowing for progress?

Tauranga Domain is an historic site. According to an article published by respected local historian Jinty Rorke, the land was occupied by Māori until 1828, and when the mission house was built, the surrounding area was used for grazing and growing vegetables. During the time of the New Zealand Wars, the land was occupied by the British military.

The land was designated a public domain in 1873, and sports fields and a band rotunda were constructed in the 1890s. The entrance to the domain, built in 1921, is bordered by gates commemorating the locals who died in World War I.

After World War II, the domain was used as a transition camp for returned servicemen.

As of today, the Tauranga City Council website lists 10 sports clubs as regular users of the sports facility, and the domain has been used for rugby matches, music festivals and concerts that have been attended by thousands of people.

The building of a new stadium would presumably ensure that larger-scale events could be held there, and perhaps with increased frequency. There are hopes of hosting more rugby matches, for one.

But that doesn’t mean everyone’s excited at the prospect of a new stadium.

The council’s commissioners are considering whether the proposed stadium could be built upon the domain’s all-weather athletics track, the Tauranga Croquet Club and the Tauranga Bowling Club.

Understandably, some users of those clubs are distressed at potentially losing their facilities. And a protest in March attracted up to 400 people who were also against the proposed stadium.

There are those people who insist we already have a perfectly good stadium – Baypark at Mount Maunganui. But just as many people will rush to rubbish it – saying it was built as a speedway track, after all, not a rugby stadium.

I won’t lie, the idea of having a stadium in the centre of our city excites me. As established above, this small-town girl has grown to love events. It’d be good for our languishing city centre, too.

But I also cherish our parks and green spaces, especially since having a child, and I have a particular concern for the preservation of historic spaces.

Plus, I’d hate to see any of that beautiful land turned into a parking lot.

Where does that leave me? Honestly, I’m not sure.

I’d hate for yet another promising development to be repeatedly shelved and brought up again in a few years (ahem, museum, Memorial Park boardwalk, ahem), especially as large-scale projects only ever grow more expensive over time.

But sometimes, on the rare occasion, it is good to embrace that small-town mentality and preserve what we’ve got.

Sonya Bateson is a writer, reader, and crafter raising her family in Tauranga. She is a Millennial who enjoys eating avocado on toast, drinking lattes and defying stereotypes. As a sceptic, she reserves the right to change her mind when presented with new evidence.