Hopes of getting a third all-weather hockey pitch installed at Park Island in Napier by next winter are hanging the air – quite literally.
The hold up as the Hawke's Bay Hockey Artificial Surface Trust re-energises its plans for more turf is a stretch of almost half a kilometre of overhead power supply that will need to go underground.
It's not just any power supply, but a 33kV line that is one of the major supplies feeding Napier, and it could add more than $300,000 to the cost of laying the turf adjacent to the western side of the complex.
Founding and continuing trust chairman Neil Edmundson, a Napier accountant, said the trust now has the "wherewithal" to spend about $2 million on the new pitch and lighting, but the extra cost of undergrounding the power supply is currently beyond its reach.
Playing numbers have reached the stage where extra artificial pitches are desperately needed, he said.