{"id":548277,"date":"2026-07-28T18:47:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T18:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/548277\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T18:47:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T18:47:10","slug":"upper-hutt-mayor-wants-trentham-race-course-turned-into-high-density-housing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/548277\/","title":{"rendered":"Upper Hutt mayor wants Trentham race course turned into high-density housing"},"content":{"rendered":"

The mayor of Upper Hutt is already eyeing the marked-for-closure Trentham race course for high density housing.<\/p>\n

Trentham is one of seven tracks proposed to be shut down<\/a> as part of a masterplan to keep the horse racing industry afloat, announced on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Mayor Peri Zee said it could be an opportunity for the growing city.<\/p>\n

“It’s up to the racing bodies what they do with their sites, but it does create some potential opportunities for Upper Hutt if they do go ahead and close it,” she said.<\/p>\n

“As a large piece of land, there’s always other things that could be done on that site if there was no racing to be done, something like a high density residential development with retail, which we all know we need more housing in the region, so that could potentially be beneficial.”<\/p>\n

\"Upper<\/p>\n

Upper Hutt Mayor Peri Zee.<\/p>\n

RNZ \/ Samuel Rillstone<\/p>\n

She said the racecourse was once a major destination for Upper Hutt.<\/p>\n

“It’s obviously going to be sad for the people who have been involved in the racing industry and have fond memories there, but times do change,” she said.<\/p>\n

“When I was a teenager it was the place to go, we all used to get dressed up and go in big groups, walk down to the race track. It was more about, I think, getting dressed up and being all together than necessarily watching the horses, but it was the place to be.<\/p>\n

“[Since then] it does seem there has been declining attendance and less buzz<\/a> around big events.”<\/p>\n

She said demand for housing in Upper Hutt was massive.<\/p>\n

“I’d be really happy to have additional housing capacity in Upper Hutt, we’ve had the highest number of first home buyers and part of that is because we have higher density housing coming here and we expect that to continue,” Zee said.<\/p>\n

“If that’s their decision we’ll look forward to working with them on what the future of that site could be.”<\/p>\n

Racing expert and former commentator Sheldon Murtha said track closures had been a long time coming.<\/p>\n

“Anyone else who’s in this game has said it’s overdue,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It has to happen, there’s been a race track in every corner of New Zealand since back in the day when racing was massive. It’s not so massive [anymore].<\/p>\n

“It’s still a viable industry, it’s still a sport people want to go and see in the holidays, people still want to participate in it whether they’re fans or bettors… It’s just not as big as it used to be.”<\/p>\n

He expected most in the industry would accept it as inevitable, but it wouldn’t necessarily be popular.<\/p>\n

“I think the hot point, as it always has been, will be when racing clubs and communities have to give up their race track facility,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The mayor of Upper Hutt is already eyeing the marked-for-closure Trentham race course for high density housing. Trentham…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548278,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-548277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548277","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=548277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}