Construction of the $5.56M Luggate Memorial Centre, beside the Hopkins Street reserve, is now complete but the building will remain closed until a code of compliance has been granted.

Luggate Community Association (LCA) chair Rod Anderson said it’s been a long wait for the building to be completed but the community is hoping it will be opened before Christmas.

“There’s no doubt whatsoever the building is going to be fantastic and a real asset,” he said.

LCA members have been informally discussing an opening celebration event and one of the options could be to combine it with the community’s annual “Christmas do”, Rod said. 

The centre’s construction, which began in July 2021, was meant to have been completed within 12 months but ran into construction supply issues during the global pandemic and its scheduled opening has been pushed back twice.

A relocatable building was put in place in 2019 to provide a temporary community centre for Luggate.

Designed to meet Passive House standards it required special, highly energy-efficient windows. These were originally sourced in New Zealand but when the supplier went out of business during the pandemic, the council was forced to import them and ran into transit delays, Queenstown Lakes District Council (QLDC) property director Quintin Howard said.

QLDC media advisor Sam White said the council is now waiting on a code of compliance, which was expected to be lodged last week but may take around a month to process.

“We’re keen to hold an opening ceremony as soon as possible,” he said, adding consideration was being given to a mid-November date.

While waiting for the windows, contractors completed work on the adjacent car parking as well as landscaping of the Hopkins Street reserve, and reinstalling the playground equipment. 

Luggate’s Memorial Hall was opened in 1954 and closed 63 years later in 2017.

The original memorial hall was closed in 2017 and the Luggate community was without a community centre until 2019 when a relocatable council building was moved onto the Hopkins Street site to act as an interim community centre.

However, the relocatable building was removed before construction began on the new venue in June 2021 and the community has been without a proper community facility since then.

Luggate community also lost its two popular tennis courts when it was decided to locate the new venue away from the main road but, Rod said, replacement tennis courts, or something similar in size with a hard surface for recreational use, were still desired by the community.

“They haven’t been written off,” he said. 

Rod said the priority was to get the centre completed and then he would hold the council to its promise that the community would be “no worse off” for usable recreational space.

The original Luggate Memorial Hall was built in 1954 but, in the wake of the Christchurch  earthquake when the safety of all local government buildings was reviewed, the hall was assessed as an earthquake risk and closed in August 2017. 

PHOTOS: Wānaka App