CITY PLAYING AREAS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20964, 1 March 1930, Page 19

CITY PLAYING AREAS.

PROGRESS AT LOGAN PARK. A MAGNIFICENT RESERVE. It is probable that no centre in the Dominion can boast the possession of a municipal playing area to compare in size or appointments with that which Dunedin has in Logan Park. Ivor is it likely that any other city has 65 acres of reserve in one place, devoted entirely to sport, which has been less of a burden to the ratepayer. Logan Park to-day presents an appearance which must be distinctly gratifying to the Reserves Committes of the City Council, which have been connected with the work of reclamation and improvement which has occupied the past few years. Inasmuch as Logan Park will always stand as a monument to tlie success of the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition, it is only proper that a serious 1 attempt should have been made to do something permanently worth while with ’the wide area of land upon which the Exhibition stood, but it is doubtful whether even the most ardent supporters of the scheme to convert it into a great city playground were optimistic enough to expect that it would be possible to accomplish as much as Mr D. Tannock (director of city reserves) has done since the completion of the Demolition Company’s contract left the ground clear for him to work upon. In this one area there is accommodation for all manner of sports in winter or summer. Excellent wickets have been provided this season for cricketers, and on two occasions the park has been the scene of two First Grade fixtures in one afternoon. There were those who were inclined to ridicule the idea of ever having, really good wickets at Logan Park, but the fact that the best totals of the current cricket season were scored there would appear to have effectively silenced such Jeremiads. 1 In the winter there is provision for Rugby football, Association football, hockey, and basket ball, and every playing ground is fitted up with its own appointments. Next summer will see a great increase in the summer sports played at Logan Park. The Otago Lawn Tennis Association is at present busy with the laying down of 12 new hard courts and four grass courts, two of which have been completed already. Later on when the necessary inducement offers the association will make use of a further area of ground, adjacent to the site of the present courts, for the laying down of another dozen courts. What was well known to Exhibition visitors as the aquarium has now all but lost its iden tity, the builders having worked to good effect in converting it into a pavilion and suite of dressing rooms. Another sport that -will make its appearance in the near future is croquet, a Logan Park Club having been formed during the past month, as a result of the provision of ground by the Reserves Committee of the 'City Council. The most important point about Logan Park and its cost to the city is the fact that so many of the local sports bodies have contributed very largely to the cost of the work of laying out. The University Students’ Association and the University authorities bore no mean share of the cost of putting their ground in order, and the magnificent new grand stand which flanks this playing field, erected at a cost, of about £6OOO, was provided without any payment by the ratepayers as a body. The new stand is now receiving the last finishing touches, and will be ready some weeks before the first big event which will attract crowds to it—the Easter tournament of university colleges of New Zealand., There will be few dissentients from the view that it is the finest structure of its kind in the city. Its seating accommodation is estimated at almost 2000, and its dressing room and gymnasium appointments beneath the tiered floor have no equal in any of the other play grounds in the city. There is accommodation for both men and women players, and the whole of the interior is finished off with the neatest and best of lining, instead of being left almost hare to catch cobwebs and dust and dirt, as is the case with many similar buildings that were built a few years ago. The tiled roof which crowns the bright „ I^e . painted woodwork puts an effective finishing touch to an extremely sightly piece of work.

The Lawn Tennis Association has undertaken all the work involved in respect to its courts, and the result should be one of the best appointed playing areas in the Dominion, the two grand stands and two pavilions, to say nothing of the Art Gallery, which also occupies a site in the park,_ giving the ground a distinction tnat is as gratifying as it; is unusual. ‘