Football club seeks building permission

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34105, 18 March 1976, Page 13

Football club seeks building permission

Permission to build clubrooms at a site at 47 and 49 Mandeville Street, Riccarton, is being sought by the Marist Rugby Football Club. Submissions in favour of | the scheme and objections I were heard before the Riccarton Borough Council's town planning committee on Tuesday . evening. the president of the club (Mr D. S. Hughes) said that it had conditional contracts to buy the two properties in Mandeville Street, and proposed to develop the site by erecting a building which would include changingrooms, showers, lavatories, hall, kitchen facilities, and three squash courts. Off-street parking would be

I provided for 40 cars, and the (Site would be landscaped. i “The facilities the club pro- | poses are an essential part i of any residential community, whether they be erected and controlled by a football club or any other organisation. Several clubs in the city have headquarters — with attendant facilities — in residential areas,” Mr Hughes said. Although the proposed site was in a special development area (S.D.A. 4) it had an underlying zoning of residential B in the council’s district scheme, and this zoning allowed the club’s proposed facilities as a predominant use, he said. COMPANY OBJECTS The South Island manager of the Fletcher Development Company, Ltd (Mr D. D. S. Smith) said the site was part

lof any area which was op-, posite the Fletcher company’s plant in Mandeville Street and which was meant, under S.D.A. 4 zoning, to be redeveloped as council yards, professional, commercial, and administrative offices and parking areas. The club’s proposal was incompatible with the objects of the S.D.A. 4 zoning, and his company opposed it. His company felt that the building of clubrooms would undermine the stability of the district scheme and its objects and so undermine the stability of the future of the Fletcher complex.

“Councilors will know that once one incompatible use is permitted in a zone it is diffi cult to resist arguments in favour of another incompat ible use in the same zone,’ he said.

He agreed with a suggestion by one of the councillors that the clubrooms would occupy land that his company might want to use, but he emphasised that his objections were a “matter of principle.” DRINKING FEARS

Mrs B. A. Nairn, of 51 Mandeville Street, said she lived next door to the site of the proposed clubrooms and was concerned that they might become a “de facto tavern.” She complained that she would be disturbed by the noise of cars in the car-park, which would be adjacent to her house.

“I am concerned that the clubrooms are not on the rugby grounds, and this leads me to believe the building is there for more of a social nature than a sporting one,” she said. The council will announce its decision at its next meeting.