The entrance to the new Parakiore Sport Centre, in March 2023. It's now scheduled to open in the first quarter of 2025 - nine years later than originally planned. Photo: Ōtākaro Limited
Christchurch has run out of indoor sports courts, with multiple netball and basketball competitions forced to play outside of the district.
The Canterbury ANZ Premiership netball team was even struggling to book Christchurch's single multi-use arena for games.
Haidee Stratford is the general manager of the Trident Homes Tactix team.
She said while Christchurch Arena was an amazing venue, securing its availability was difficult.
"At the end of the day, it's not a sports stadium. It can be a sports stadium... but it's also a venue for cooking shows, motorhome expos," Stratford said.
"Cirque du Soleil, for example, is coming [to Christchurch] during the time of the finals series and has been booked for well over two years.
"We enquired [about finals games] two years ago when we got this season's draw, but unfortunately couldn't get in."
Aliyah Dunn of the Tactix shoots during this year's ANZ Premiership netball match against the Magic. Photo: PHOTOSPORT
The 2023 grand final will be played in Hamilton instead.
The Tactix were using Rangiora's MainPower Stadium as an alternative, even though it could only hold 500 spectators.
It is also 30 minutes out of Christchurch, but Stratford said there were no others that were suitable.
"It's still a facility for us that ticked all the boxes from a delivery perspective for the premiership.
"But certainly financially it's tough because we can't get the normal gate we get at Christchurch Arena," she said.
The team was losing thousands of dollars each time it played there, normally drawing a crowd of between 2000 and 4000 people.
Canterbury Basketball general manager Clive Beaumont said the situation was not much better for community competitions.
"We start our club season in April, but we kind of have to predict how much court space we're going to need six or seven months in advance in September.
"We currently run our weekend competitions across 11 separate venues and 16 courts in total. That consists of both council and school facilities," he said.
James Lissaman (R), Canterbury Basketball community manager and Clive Beaumont, Canterbury Basketball general manager (L). Photo: RNZ / Niva Chittock
Venues were also spread across Christchurch and the neighbouring Selwyn District.
This year, they had had to cap the number of teams because they could not afford to staff more venues, Beaumont said.
"It is a challenging task every year. There are 79 games every Saturday and 18 each Sunday. Plus mid-week games, our representative programmes, Kiwi Hoops programmes, Girls Got Game programmes - all of which need court space.
"Some schools will also charge more when the school is not occupied, so if we need space during the school holidays, we're having to pay more," he said.
Competition team numbers have doubled in the past eight years, with now almost 9000 weekly players from primary school through to premier grades.
Christchurch's multi-use Parakiore Metro Sport Facility will ease the strain, adding nine more indoor courts.
But Covid-19 and ground conditions had added further delays to the post-earthquake anchor project.
It was now scheduled to open in the first quarter of 2025 - nine years later than originally planned.
An elevated view of the Parakiore Metro Sport Facility complex taken in December 2022. Photo: Ōtākaro Limited
Christchurch City Council manager of recreation and sport services David Bailey said the city's existing indoor facilities were at 87 percent capacity.
"There's no doubt that there's a lot of demand for indoor sports space, which is fantastic," he said.
"It's across a range of sports - volleyball, netball, basketball, floorball, korfball - it just goes on and on, as does the number of people that would love to use an indoor space because it's more certain they can go and have the experience [without weather-related cancellations]."
The council had already done an allocation exercise for Parakiore, Bailey said, and all sports would get equitable access to the facility.
"We asked the sports what they'd like to use... and when we looked at all the requests for space, we would be able to accommodate all the requests - with a little bit of juggling."
"[Parakiore] would pretty much be full straight away, which is fantastic... It means there are more people being active."
He acknowledged the extensive delays had created challenging situations for some sporting codes.
The Tactix and Canterbury Rams basketball team would get priority bookings on the show courts which would have a crowd capacity of more than 2500, Bailey said.
Canterbury Community Basketball manager James Lissaman hoped the centre would support better game development.
"[In Parakiore], Under 13 kids will get to see adult women and men playing, as opposed to only seeing their competition and their peers [in the current arrangement]," he said.
"It's a lot easier to recognise there's a pathway going all the way up, from juniors to adults, if you can see it."
