Community Effort Built Masterton War Memorial

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28552, 3 April 1958, Page 9

Community Effort Built Masterton War Memorial

“The Press’* Special Service

WELLINGTON, April 2. Sixty-seven miles from Wellington, in the heart of the Wairarapa, is an £BB,OOO example of what can be achieved when a town of 13,000 people gets wholeheartedly behind a fine community project. The result is Masterton’s massive war memorial stadium and swimming pool, on which only £5OO is owing—and this is guaranteed by the local licensing trust. The stadium and pool (their proper title the Masterton and Districts Citizens’ War Memorial Stadium and Swimming Pool) are two phases of an eventual fourphase £125,000 project, which began 12 years ago and has flourished since. Planned by a Masterton architect, Mr T. H. Daniel, the memorial stadium and adjoining pool are sited at the northern approach to the town on the picturesque banks of the Waipoua river. The project received the Government war memorial subsidy, but was financed essentially by public supscription. Local sporting bodies joined fprees to back the enterprising War Memorial Committee with a vigorous fund-raising drive. Briefly, the completed phases of the project comprise a 110 ft by 55ft swimming pool of international standard, a separate diving pool 30ft square and lift 6in deep, a large paddling pool, and permanent seating for 600 with temporary seating for another 920. A start will be made soon on a 25-yard-long 3ft-deep learners’ pool. Heat Pump

A modern filtration plant allows for the changing of the water six times a day. A heat pump system keeps the temperature at 72 degrees, but this can be increased as required. The pump system is so constructed that it will also provide refrigeration for a proposed 2500 sq. ft. ice-skating rink, which will also be available for rollerskating. Undoubtedly one of the best In the Dominion, the indoor stadium covers a .quarter of an acre, is 120 ft long and 66ft wide, with seating for 1120. For boxing and wrestling matches the seating can be increased to 2120.

A cost-saving aspect of the project has been the combining of the baths and stadium dressing room facilities. The 10 dressing rooms are considered to be ample to meet all requirements. The stadium can provide a fullsize basketball or tennis court, five badminton courts, or 33 bowling mats. The timber floor, mounted on a bitumastic composition over a five-inch concrete slab, will allow for the staging of heavy exhibits for an industrial fair or the like. There are individual press and broadcasting facilities for both the stadium and pool, also a multipoint controlled sound system.

Hall of Memories The projected extension of the stadium will include the provision of six committee rooms, a supper room, accommodating 250 with kitchen facilities, and a hall of memories with rolls of honour of servicemen whom the stadium is designed to commemorate. The pool, of which Mr D. J. Gayton, former president of the Taranaki Amateur Swimming Association, is custodian and professional swimming coach, will be made available two nights a week for club activities. The stadium, brilliantly lit, was recently used to stage a major indoor athletic meeting (20 laps of the stadium to the mile), at which the New Zealand champion pole vaulter, M. Richards, of Otago, competed. A speciallydesigned, mobile sawdust pit ensured Richards’s smooth landing. Extension of the beautiful Queen Elizabeth Park lake by a quarter square mile, a memorial drive through an avenue of scarlet oaks imported from Holland, the erection of an open-air theatre complete with a> multi-purpose rostrum, a removable sound shell and seating for 1000. are other facets of the project. The enlarged lake is expected to be sufficient for Frostbite class yachting. The Masterton Beay&fying Society also has a project to

flower-line the curving banks of the Waipoua river. Three weirs are also to be built on the river to provide picnic swimming facilities for some 2000 persons.

With the first two phases of the war memorial project—erection and heating of the stadium and pool—a reality, and public enthusiasm still at its peak, the completion of phases three and four —integration of the refrigeration plant for the ice rink and the covering-in of the permanent pool grandstand—seems assured.