First steps taken toward Whanganui club hub development

Four Whanganui clubs are in the early stages of developing a hub for their groups on the Whanganui Camera Club's grounds on Handley Street. Photo / Finn Williams

The first steps have been taken towards the development of a new hub for four Whanganui clubs.

The land at 2 Handley Street in Gonville is owned by the Whanganui District Council and leased by the Whanganui Camera Club.

Whanganui Camera Club president John Smart said the club doesn’t use the full grounds, so developed the idea of a hub to find more uses for it.

“We use the buildings mostly, but the grounds are there, so there’s a lot more space than we need for ourselves,” he said.

Three other clubs are already interested in this idea - Men’s Shed Whanganui, the Whanganui Women’s Club, and the Rotary Club of Whanganui.

Whanganui District Council general manager of community, property and places, Sarah O’Hagan, said council officers met with members of all four clubs to begin discussions on each club’s requirements and whether those could be met by the site.

Smart said the camera club would keep 40 per cent of the land, while the other 60 would go to the other three clubs.

He said it was one of the few plots of land that could be developed for this purpose.

“It’s a relatively rare hunk of land,” he said.

Men’s Shed Whanganui is a community trust which helps its retired members - men and women - pursue hobbies like woodwork and metalwork.

The shed had only recently moved into a new building on Peat Street, but that move was on a temporary lease.

Smart said they were interested in moving to Handley St once their lease is up for a more permanent residence.

With the group needing somewhere to house their machinery, Smart said they would have the most significant building requirements for the land.

The Whanganui Women’s Club gets together each week for games of Bolivia and bridge and is mainly made up of retired women.

They currently operate out of an historic homestead on Ingestre Street, but Smart said they were looking to move to somewhere requiring less maintenance.

The Rotary Club of Whanganui supports the local community by sponsoring and organising its own community events and fundraisers, and recently helped with the opening of the Riverbank Fitness Park.

If the development was to go ahead, Smart said the lease for the land would be divided between the four clubs.

O’Hagan said the council’s role in this was to facilitate and support the discussion between the clubs.

“We are really supportive of bringing the clubs together to work through their respective requirements,” she said.

Smart said a second meeting would be held in three months to allow the separate clubs to discuss with their members what they wanted and to develop a basic layout.

“By the next meeting, we may have some design ... that could therefore work,” he said.

Currently, there wasn’t a timeframe in place, but Smart said it was unlikely to work would begin either this or next year.

The club’s lease on the land ends in May 2025.

The three other clubs were contacted for comment.