The Making of Te Rimutahi, 254 Ponsonby Road

Not long ago, there were celebrations on Ponsonby Road as the new park was delivered. It is a stunning, well-designed space and thanks are due to the community who kept the project on the radar over many years. But the story starts ten years before the community-led design group even began . . .

It was the Western Bays Community Board who got the ball rolling 20 years ago.  Armed with the Boffa Mikelll report on the need for a public space on the northern end of Ponsonby Road received in 2000, the board began the search for a suitable site.  But no realistic option was found until the Liquor King premises at 254 Ponsonby Road came on the market in 2005.  It wasn’t the perfect site, but it was available!

The Community Board had access to over two million dollars in the form of Development Contributions Fund (over half of the DC’s were earmarked for city-wide projects, and the balance was allocated to the relevant Community Board).  Unfortunately the asking price was roughly double what the Board could afford, so they presented a proposal to the Arts, Culture and Recreation Committee that they would allocate all of their DC funds toward purchasing the LK site if Council would stump up a similar amount to complete the deal.  It certainly helped that local Councillor Penny Sefuiva chaired the ARC Committee, who accepted our proposition after officers investigated and reported back favourably.  

 So it was that the site was acquired by Council in 2006, albeit with no funding to develop the land.  The existing premises remained and were leased out.  It took some years to agree the design through a community-led process.  Then came the disruption of replacing the old Community Board structure with the Local Board system under the Super City in 2010.  Although this was the Local Board’s chosen priority project under the OLI (One Local Initiative) scheme in 2016-17, Covid and other issues caused most of the OLIs to lose their funding.  And during the Emergency Budget process council tried to cancel the project and sell off the land (worth $11.2m in June 2021).

However, a private donor had left property valued over $5 million as a bequest to council that had to be used in the local area. It had been decided to sell the land and attach it to the project. It couldn’t be used for projects outside the area. And so in 2022 the local board of the time gave up on any additional Auckland Council funding to develop the site and rescoped the project to fit the budget. The new building went, a larger civic space was created.

And it is looking absolutely glorious. Huge thanks to the many people who made it happen