Carterton Rugby Football Club grounds. PHOTO/FILE
EMILY IRELAND
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A multi-sports hub at Carterton’s Howard Booth Park, which was put on hold last year, is still on the cards.
The proposed sports hub, known as HubCap, would bring rugby, football, squash, tennis, indoor netball, and croquet together at the same venue, as well as other facilities.
HubCap Trust chairman Steve Hurley told the Times-Age on Monday that meetings would be organised this month to progress the project.
“There’s a lot of misinformation that this project has fallen away,” he said.
“It’s not going to go away.”
The HubCap proposal was first put to Carterton District Council in 2017 and a community consultation was done about the potential for the council to provide funding to the project.
The rugby club was to be the anchor tenant at the HubCap and would be its principal investor.
Part of the proposal was for the rugby club to sell its existing land and use the funds from the sale to invest into the buildings at the sports hub as part of Stage One of the design.
The total cost of the initial stage would be from $1.57m to $1.75m.
This would include grass and drainage work, fencing, demolition, paths, car parks, a clubhouse, and grandstand relocation.
Before providing the council with its final plans, Carterton Rugby Club found the proposal in its current form was not feasible at the time due to escalating costs, and the project was put on hold last March.
Hurley said the main issue which put a halt to the project was the value of the rugby club’s land to be sold.
He could not say how much the rugby club were hoping to get for the land to make the project feasible.
Since March, the HubCap Trust had been looking at other designs for the sports hub and Hurley said he would have a better idea of whether HubCap would happen “sooner or later” by the end of the month.
He was certain the project would go ahead.
