At a time when local governments should be examining their budgets and living more within their (and ratepayers') means, Wellington City Council is ploughing on with the idiotic Kilbirnie Indoor Sports Centre.
Back in the early '90s, the Wellington Winter Show building on the corner of John and Wallace Sts in Mt Cook was a regular haunt for me. Back then it was painted bright yellow, like Rodney's jacket, and pimpled with big red half balls. Yea verily, it was ugly. You couldn't help to notice it. I used to play indoor volleyball there, and even worked as security guard for a Midnight Oil concert held there once.
These days, it's an anonymous gunmetal grey building. The boils have been lanced, and the building is host to a much more popular pursuit. The New Zealand School of Dance lives there, altogether a much more constructive use to house human movement.
So when I look at the clusterfuck at Cobham Park, it's not just the bad numbers that refuse to add up, or the logistics of traffic movement and storage, or the expontential pricetag. Let's all save a lot of mucking about and get straight down to the endgame.
Forget the 12-court >$62 million barn. Move the MetService there, just across the road from NIWA. We need to bring these two closer together and get some sparks flying.
