Te Newhanga Kāpiti Community Centre

Due to issues resulting from ongoing weather-tightness issues, Te Newhanga Kāpiti Community Centre is closed. Council is committed to rebuilding or replacing the centre.

Council appreciates the important role the community centre plays in creating social connections, providing safe and welcoming spaces, and accommodating important community services. We've budgeted $5 million to rebuild or replace the community centre. We’re working with centre users and our community to co-design a community centre that meets their needs.

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Designing the new or upgraded community centre

To develop our new community centre, we'll:

• work closely with partners, stakeholders, regular users, and our community to identify how they might use, and what they value in, a community centre
• assess the existing building to see if we can reuse parts of it, and whether it’s worthwhile to do so; constructing a new building might provide a better community facility in a more affordable and/or sustainable way
• consider the best location for a community centre in Paraparaumu, in case the existing building is not reused
• create a concept design and ideas, and then engage our communities again to test and refine ideas
• Council will select a preferred option
• complete the detailed design
• carry out construction, which might involve repairing and modifying the existing community centre, or building a new one in the same or different location.

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What users have told us so far

We’ve had several workshops and interviews with centre users and stakeholders, who generously shared their experiences and their ideas about what a new community centre might deliver to our diverse community. They told us:

• we want a space where we can connect with each other and help connect people we work with to others who can support them
• when multiple organisations and services operate in a shared space, connections and opportunities happen organically
• building and maintaining a community space to a high standard helps people feel valued
• the design should consider people with physical disabilities, and those who might disturb other activities
• outside spaces, eg, gardens, carparks, pathways and lighting, also need to be considered in design
• there should be a ‘welcome’ space and someone to greet us
• being somewhere central and close to public transport is important.

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Background to closure

Testing showed, that despite remedial works, moisture ingress had spread to several areas of the community centre and resulted in significant levels of mould and decay throughout the building.

Results of a structural investigation of the building carried out in late 2020 concluded that the structurally degraded timber has reduced the building’s overall bracing strength by 15 to 20 percent compared to its original bracing. The building was achieving 58 to 60 percent of the current new building requirement, which means it was not dangerous or earthquake prone as defined by the Building Act.

Air quality testing carried out on 22 February 2021 showed increased spore counts of Penicillium/Aspergillus in both the Totara and Pohutukawa rooms. The amount of Stachybotrys (also known as toxic black mould) and Chaetomium (another mould that can cause allergic reactions and respiratory infections in immune-compromised people) increased in the Totara Room.

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History 

The Kāpiti Community Centre was located over the railway lines in Paraparaumu for many years. In the 1990s a Community Trust was established to raise funds for a new centre, to be located on Ngahina Street. The Deputy Mayor of the time, Murray Jensen, was instrumental in this process and in 1996 the building was completed. Later, the building was gifted to Council and run by an independent community organisation. In 2011, the local hapu, Te Uri o te Ngarara, gifted a tipuna name to the Centre, Te Newhanga. This was significant in acknowledging the connection to local hapu and iwi, while recognising the importance of the centre to community.

In 2018, Council became the kaitiaki of the centre.

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