Residents have their say on future community hub

What makes up a community hub? This is the question the communities of Brightwater and Wakefield are trying to answer for themselves.

Community consultation sessions for a needs assessment for a new Waimea South Community Hub have now been completed, with many residents in the two towns giving feedback on the holes they see in the current accessible leisure options in their area.

“What’s really important with this project is actually getting that feedback from the community,” says Moutere-Waimea Ward councillor Christeen Mackenzie, a long-time advocate for the facility.

“I feel very strongly that it shouldn’t be the council deciding what the community needs.”

Attendees of the consultation session at the Wanderers Community Sports Club in Brightwater last Tuesday spoke of a need for more youth activities in the town, as well as highlighting the underutilisation of existing community buildings like the Brightwater Public Hall.

And at another consultation last November, some Wakefield residents emphasized the senior community and said that any new community facility should need adequate heating so it could serve as a social space for the elderly, even in winter.

The Tasman District will see its elderly population increase to one-in-three residents by 2048, and with the populations of Brightwater and Wakefield expected to grow by a total of 1,800 people by 2051, there is a real need for any new community hub to have adequate facilities for those of all ages and a wide range of interests.

“We actually want to have something for them to do so they can remain here in their local communities and not have to travel,” Christeen says.

Wanderers Community Sports Club manager Jimmy van der Colk was one of the Brightwater community’s attendees at the consultation session last Tuesday night.

“There’s a lot that we could offer the community which we’re not currently doing,” he says.

While he specifically mentioned youth engagement and smaller activity groups, like chess and table tennis, Jimmy says there’s a lot of broader untapped potential in Brightwater that hopefully a unified community facility could tap into.

The Wanderers Community Sports Club used to be the Wanderers Rugby Club but has since rebranded and reorganised its governance structure with many local sports run by their own committees but each having a say in club matters.

A similar system has been floated as a potential management structure for a Waimea South Community Hub to ensure the needs of Brightwater and Wakefield and their various groups and clubs are not outcompeting each other.

That approach seems to be working well for the Wanderers.

“It’s definitely put us in the right place to take on those larger community projects,” Jimmy says.

The report on the needs assessment is expected to be completed in the next few weeks at which stage the feasibility and design work can begin.

Feasibility and design work is already funded by a grant from central government as part of its Better Off funding.

“Once this piece of work is finished, we can rapidly move on to the next stage,” Christeen says. “The sooner the better.”

It’s still very early days in the Waimea South Community Hub project, and nothing is yet set in stone.

The location, design, governance model, and decision on whether the hub’s a new build, a renovation of an existing building, or a network of buildings across Brightwater and Wakefield are still yet to be discussed and will be subject to further community input.