Gina Treadwell thought Wellington’s famous winds were behind her when she and her family relocated south to Wanaka in 2017.

Gina admits now she didn’t realise how hard the wind also blew in Wanaka, a town her family had grown to love so much on their regular winter holidays that she and her partner decided to move south as soon as the youngest of her three children left secondary school.

“The weather! We moved down here from Wellington because we hated the wind and we had no idea,’’ Gina said.

“Wanaka is a really important place for our family. The kids all learned to ski down here ... We had a place here for ten or 12 years but it was only in the last few years we started having summers down here. We didn’t know how great the summers could be,’’ she said.

Despite finding Wanaka unexpectedly windy, Gina quickly found her feet and is now managing the new Wanaka Community Hub.

The hub has a large community at its back and Gina’s job is to help steer the facility into a self-sufficient future.

Her tasks include signing up tenancies and ensuring community spaces are used widely and frequently. She and the hub’s governing trust also need to find at least another $800,000 in outstanding construction costs for the $4 million building.

When Gina and her partner first arrived, they focused on building their new family home

She then saw an advertisement for the hub’s establishment manager, which suited her marketing and project management background. She also saw it as a role that would involve her in the community.

When she began work in March 2018, her responsibilities included marketing and communication, finalising leases, overseeing the fit-out, and preparing for the hub’s opening on November 2 last year.

Gina had previously set up a branch of the Kiwi Can children’s charity in Wellington. It is now the Graeme Dingle Foundation’s primary school programme for children aged five to 12-years-old and teaches values and life skills in many of Wellington’s low decile schools.

Earlier in her career, the Massey University marketing graduate spent nine years working overseas, first in a large European company in London and then in Tokyo, where she studied Japanese language at university.

By the early 2000s, she was back in Wellington, a mother-of-three and co-owner of a Wairarapa vineyard.

After setting up and running Wellington’s Kiwi Can charity, she took on a five-year management role at Statistics New Zealand.

“It was a really interesting role. The team I was managing were at the heart of NZ Stats, responsible for the development of statistical methods with some really interesting topics being explored while I was there,’’ she said.

Gina left the government department to work in Wellington’s event industry before moving south.

With the Trust now facing the challenge of raising the outstanding $800,000, Gina wants to encourage philanthropist organisations and individuals to continue supporting the hub financially.

She acknowledged Wanaka is a small community and the same people are consistently being asked for support by a multitude of organisations.

She also acknowledged local initiatives can be tough to fund because they don’t fit regional or national funding criteria.

The Wanaka Community Hub Trust had always known it would need to raise funds retrospectively. Once the outstanding amount is raised, income from leases and event spaces will cover running costs and maintenance.

“Over these next four or five months, I am keen to get as many of the community into the hub as I can. Once people have seen the inside they can really see the potential for the place," she said.

A foray to Wellington continues to float her boat but Gina loves the thrill of boarding a plane to come home.

“I don’t know what it is about Wanaka. You think every so often you have to get out, but after two or three days it is so nice to come back home,’’ she said.

“Here, we have a real sense of community that you don’t often get in a big city. I love the place.’’

PHOTO: Supplied