“I hope the council will pick it up and do something concrete with it. We may need to be a little bit more ruthless about what we can and can’t achieve, and what we need to prioritise and what can be sensibly shifted to someone else, because we don’t have the capacity to do everything.”
A report revealed that in the six months to the end of September the trust had already approved distributions worth about $1.9 million, after receiving more than $4.7 million-worth of applications.
The trust’s positive major funding pool alone is now oversubscribed, with more than three times the amount of funding being requested for the $850,000 available this year. Trustee Philip Searle said the sports facility issue was now for Gisborne District Council to consider, rather than ECT.
Although ECT may well do something about the issue, the trust should be careful not to raise expectations, he said. Fellow trustee and Gisborne Mayor Meng Foon said he favoured a combined approach.
The study, conducted in 2012, said Gisborne was unlike most other regions because it had no indoor facilities that were funded by the local council and many sporting codes were operating in facilities that were “no longer fully fit for purpose”.
The report highlighted several key needs, including the need to replace the ageing Olympic Pool Complex with an indoor aquatic centre, as well as the need for a regional indoor stadium that could provide a fully compliant event court with spectator seating (1000–1500) within a three-court facility.
Gisborne also needed a replacement regional hub for gymsports (including trampoline) through development of a new “human movement centre”, along with a need to consolidate investment in one regional spectator arena for rugby, rugby league and football.
At the community level the report noted there was a need in Ruatoria and Kaiti for the provision of indoor courts to fill gaps in the district-wide network.
The need for a regional hockey hub and synthetic playing surface was also noted in the study. This was achieved with the opening of the LJ Hooker hockey turf.