The Open Day on Saturday 14 May was a great success, with around 350 people attending, virtually all of whom felt strongly that the reserve should be retained. For reference, this is around 10% of the population of Mission Bay, so a substantial turnout.
Many people had great ideas about how the land and buildings could be used to benefit the community. We are still collating these, and will look to see how they can be incorporated into our proposal to the Council.
As a bonus, the coffee from the coffee truck, and the donuts from another stall were really good, adding to the success of the day.

We are holding an open day to allow the community in to the reserve to see for themselves what we have here. This facility has been locked up for more than 7 years, but we hope to change that soon. We want to turn it into a valuable community asset, and we are looking for ideas from you.

We will lay out some ideas for how this reserve and the buildings could be used, and we will provide opportunity for you to suggest what you would like to see here. To round out the experience, we will have mobile coffee , icecream and donut vendors, and have organised kids activities such as face painting, and activities.

​This land WILL be sold if we are not able to demonstrate to Council that the community wants to retain it and that we have a viable use for it. So it is really important that we get a lot of people along to show their support. We hope to capture this with an aerial photo taken from a drone of a huge crowd of supporters at 2pm, so please plan on being there for that.

There are 2 entrances: either from 9 Tagalad Road, or between 6 and 8 Nihill Crescent.

Organised by Mission Bay Kohimarama Residents Association with the support of Orakei Local Board

In order to keep Tagalad Reserve as a public ammenity, we need to clearly demonstrate to Auckland Council that the community is strongly opposed to selling the asset, and that they support our alternative plan. To help with this we have:

• launched an online petition to keep Tagalad Reserve as a community asset.  You can sign the petition here.
• set up a short survey to find out what people in the local community would like to use the reserve and the buildings for. You can take the survey here.

Please go to both these sites and help save Tagalad Reserve.

We are holding a public meeting to provide an update to everyone on our proposal, and the process we are going through with the Council. We will also be providing an update on the Proposed 8 storey development in Mission Bay which is going to the Environment Court next week.
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7pm Tuesday 18 May
Selwyn College Theatre

We hope to see you there.

On 18 March Wanda Mountfort and Don Stock from the Residents Association met with David Barker and ​Jacqui Thompson Fell from Auckland Council's Parks and Places to discuss how to progress our proposal. They were very receptive to our ideas, although did raise a few concerns. They will be meeting with the Orakei Local Board in a workshop to clarify their position. We should hear back by early May. After that, we should have a much clearer idea of how we need to proceed to make this happen.

​We are planning a public meeting to update the community on this project on 18 May. Details including the venue and time will be advised later.

We were finally able to visit the property and check out the buildings. Despite having been told that the buildings were in poor condition and would need a large budget to bring back up to standard, we actually found them to be in almost perfect condition. The main building was, of course, very dusty after being unoccupied for so long, but apart from some issues with window frame paint seemed to be in excellent condition. Other buildings needed minor repairs such as new spouting, but likewise appeared to be in good shape.

We believe that the main building could be put to good use as a community meeting space almost immediately. Some upgrades would be required to get a building warrant of fitness before it could be rented out, but these are likely minimal, things like signage, fire alarms and extinguishers.

We now need to get the Council Parks and reserves team to get on board and determine what they think is required before the space could be used, and get it priced. Then we will help the Orakei Local Board put together a business case for the facility including how it could be funded.

​We continue to work on this, but it has been a slow and frustrating process so far, and no doubt will continue to be frustrating in the future.

We made a presentation to the Orakei Local Board, and have received strong support from them for retaining the land in public ownership.  OLB has asked various organisations whether they see any uses for the land and buildings, but have not received any specific proposals back.  As a result, they have decided to endorse our proposal for a neighbourhood park and take our proposal to Panuku as the basis for getting the land back from Panuku.  We will update you on any progress.

Panuku have refused to meet with us prior to the local body elections, but have indicated they expect to start public consultation on selling the land shortly after the new Orakei Local Board has been elected.  We are putting things together to try to have a strong counter-proposal ready to present during that consultation.  In particular, we need to get the Local Board supportive, as ultimately they will operate and maintain the park out of their budgets, so without their support we would struggle to convince Panuku we have a viable alternative.