Rudman's City: Old sports fields resound to cheers of frogs

Newmarket Park once echoed to the roar of fans cheering sporting greats like Peter Snell, Murray Halberg and English soccer team Tottenham Hotspur.

These days, the silence in the long-abandoned sports arena is more likely to be broken by the chatter of cheeky fantails and the croaking of frogs which have set up home in the ornamental pond.

Last night, the Hobson community board voted in favour of the frogs and fantails staying put.

For residents who have battled for two decades to have the park turned into a passive reserve, it is victory at last. But what a long and unnecessary marathon it has been.

Known in turn as Sarawia St, Olympic Stadium and then Newmarket Park, this 5.8ha reserve's days as a sportsground effectively ended in 1979 when the eastern side collapsed into the adjacent gully.

Built over an unconsolidated tip site dating back to the First World War, it had a history of instability.

The Auckland Football Association, which used the ground for big matches, desperately searched for backers to provide the more than $1 million needed for repairs.

None was forthcoming and in 1988, when further subsidence occurred in the seating terraces, the Newmarket Borough Council cancelled soccer's lease. A cheque for $25,000 saw them go quietly.

The council, after local consultation, decided to redevelop the park as a passive reserve, planting it in native shrubs, building an ornamental lake and converting the soccer headquarters into a Japanese teahouse-like structure designed by local architect Simon Carnachan.

The budget for the work in February 1989 was $500,000, but by the time Newmarket became part of the enlarged Auckland City eight months later, $720,000 had been spent on what was, by then, a $1.3 million project.

With the lake installed and the shell of the teahouse complete, but no landscaping begun, the new council stopped all work.

It was a year later that a local, Melanie Scott, received leaked documents indicating that the council was entertaining a proposal to turn the park into a giant, artificial, plastic-coated skifield, to be open until 11 pm every day of the year.

She called a public meeting, from which emerged the Newmarket Park Protection Society.

Over the ensuing years, a series of non-starters have followed the skifield. One was a cultural park for European immigrants, divided into a series of national gardens. Another countered this with a proposal for a Japanese cultural centre. There was a plan for four international-sized bowling greens, for a botanical tree garden, for additional rugby fields for Grammar Club, and for a golf driving range.

In 1993, the council and a planning commissioner outraged many locals like Mrs Scott by agreeing to turn the park into Grammar Club rugby fields.

By then, the half-finished $200,000 teahouse had been badly vandalised.

The protection society raised more than $30,000 to challenge the council decision in the courts. That threat stymied, the most recent battle has been over the teahouse.

Last December, the community board had the choice of repairing it for $470,000 or demolishing the building at a cost of $25,000. After some agonising, they chose the latter and down it came.

The proposal voted on last night includes an enlarged lake, car parks, toilets, vegetation, seating, lighting and viewing spots - everything, you would expect in a modern passive park.

Why it has taken more than 10 years to get back to the original concept - minus the teahouse - I cannot imagine. It seems weird that new sports fields and a ski slope were ever considered viable uses for a still-consolidating old rubbish tip which has a tendency to slip and slide.

As for the local battlers, I suspect we have not heard the last of them. Mrs Scott and her band now have their eyes on the leaking sewage and stormwater pipes on the edge of the park that drain via the Newmarket Stream into Hobson Bay. Watercare beware.