{"id":349133,"date":"2026-03-26T17:15:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T17:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/349133\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T17:15:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T17:15:15","slug":"rotorua-sports-fields-delayed-up-to-a-year-after-long-consenting-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/349133\/","title":{"rendered":"Rotorua sports fields delayed up to a year after \u2018long\u2019 consenting process"},"content":{"rendered":"

\" Two sport fields would be placed at the Titoki Pl site. Photo \/ Mathew Nash<\/p>\n

In 2019, the land was sold to K\u0101inga Ora for social housing, but the sale conditions were never met, owing to cost and suitability concerns.<\/p>\n

The council retained the site in 2023<\/a> with the renewed aim of developing two sports fields.<\/p>\n

That decision followed the abandonment of the contentious Westbrook Sports and Recreation Precinct<\/a> proposal, which would have replaced the Springfield Golf Course with a mix of housing and playing fields.<\/p>\n

The council had initially hoped the new Titoki Place fields would be ready for the 2026\/27 summer season. On Wednesday, however, officials said the timeline would not be met.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are expecting a six-to-12-month delay,\u201d parks and open spaces manager Rob Pitkethley said.<\/p>\n

\"RotoruaRotorua Lakes Council’s parks and open spaces manager, Rob Pitkethley. Photo \/ Andrew Warner <\/p>\n

He said he remained hopeful the delay would be closer to six months and not a year, after what he described as a \u201cvery long\u201d consenting process, with stormwater issues proving the main obstacle.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe intention was that construction would already be underway.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe may now face a seasonal delay, with work potentially pushed beyond the wettest part of winter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rotorua has long faced a shortage of sports field capacity.<\/p>\n

A 2023 assessment found a shortfall of at least 29 hours of field capacity per week \u2013 roughly equivalent to three full-size fields. That gap was projected to widen to 93 hours by 2033, or about nine fields.<\/p>\n

\" Titoki Pl field has been used to store fill from other sites, despite being listed as a potential sport field location since 2000. Photo \/ Mathew Nash<\/p>\n

In November 2024, the council adopted a Play, Active Recreation and Sport Strategy, outlining plans to investigate up to five new fields, covering about 11ha. <\/p>\n

The strategy also emphasised the need to make better use of existing fields. <\/p>\n

Pitkethley said the delay was unlikely to affect budgets. The council allocated $2 million over two years to the project in its 2024\u201334 Long-Term Plan.<\/p>\n

In the meeting, councillors also received a museum update, approved changes to the local alcohol policy to require all off-licence premises to close at 9pm, and adopted new traffic bylaw and parking policy frameworks.<\/p>\n

Mathew Nash is a Local Democracy Reporting journalist based at the Rotorua Daily Post. He has previously written for SunLive, been a regular contributor to RNZ and was a football reporter in the UK for eight years.<\/p>\n

– LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two sport fields would be placed at the Titoki Pl site. Photo \/ Mathew Nash In 2019, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,24752,9526,63772,10669,27508,305,82,5840,2190,130,111,43,139,69,5204,14718,1327,1857,213,131,1361,61,810,5273,379,1530],"class_list":["post-349133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-ago","tag-another","tag-consenting","tag-delayed","tag-fields","tag-have","tag-identified","tag-least","tag-long","tag-more","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-process","tag-purpose","tag-rotorua","tag-site","tag-sports","tag-than","tag-that","tag-to","tag-up","tag-wait","tag-year","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}