John Browne says in cold winters particularly, Queenstown suffers from a dearth of indoor facilities, especially because the Events Centre’s often booked out.
"A lot of people in this town want to continue doing sporting activity through winter.
"Not everyone wants to go skiing, or can afford to, and that effectively is your go-to winter activity" — aside from ice skating and ice hockey.
A new stadium, he says, could cater for netball and basketball, futsal, indoor football and indoor cricket — "whether for young or old, social or serious".
Browne, a former New Zealand squash title-holder, also says the town’s squash courts by the Recreation Ground are "horrendous", and locals don’t always want to go to the CBD.
As for where the new facility would be sited, he suggests the proposed Ladies Mile subdivision.
Angela Spackman, who’s on Otago Country’s cricket board and a mother of promising teen cricketer Hugo Bogue, says "indoor facilities are being talked about right across the district as something that’s needed".
"Our closest is actually in Invercargill but our boys go to Dunedin to train [in winter].
"If you want to see cricket grow or be sustained in Queenstown, we need an indoor facility.
"I know for a fact we’ve got national and international teams who want to come to Queenstown for a training camp, but because there’s no indoor facilities they can’t book a two-week training camp if they can’t guarantee the ability to train."
Like Browne, she’s also happy to see it as part of a multi-purpose facility.
Council community services manager Simon Battrick confirms a four-court indoor centre, by the existing Events Centre stadium, is part of a draft masterplan that’s in council’s long-term plan, currently out for consultation.
He says $42million’s been allocated, however the facility itself might cost $24m to $28m with the balance going on new carparking, a new access from Grant Rd, along the back of the Events Centre, and new sportsfields.
In what he calls "a win-win", that access might be established instead by the Alliance and NZUP who are planning to use an Events Centre area as a laydown for their traffic improvement programme, including the BP roundabout.
Battrick says options for the new indoor centre include an added-on two or three lanes for indoor cricket, squash courts and a movement centre/gymnastics venue.
"There’s a bunch of options we’ve sort of said, look, these are nice-to-haves if we can afford it."
He adds the council’s already set aside $250,000 for design work, and he’s hoping to put out a tender document for this in about two weeks’ time.
