Te Newhanga Kāpiti Community Centre

Due to issues resulting from ongoing weather-tightness issues, Te Newhanga Kāpiti Community Centre is closed. 

Council appreciates the important role the community centre plays in creating social connections, providing safe and welcoming spaces, and accommodating important community services. 

What's new

March 2024 – We’re working through your survey responses to inform options. We'll soon brief Council on the survey findings and on the building condition report. In the meantime, we've created a meanwhile space for people to enjoy.

Meanwhile Space

We've worked with community groups to create a Meanwhile Space on the lawn nearby the community centre. 

This Meanwhile Space is a welcoming, vibrant, and interactive community hub – a flexible space where people can sit and relax or hold community events.

A timeline describing the history of the now-closed community centre set in a colourful container is the centrepiece of the new space. Other welcoming attractions include a ping pong table (BYO bats and balls or borrow them from the library), a sensory footpath to tickle your toes, weta motels and a racetrack for children to push toys around.

Come along and check it out!

A shed containing items for small events can be booked by emailing [email protected]

Saveboard hoarding

We installed hoarding made from sustainable ‘Saveboard’. Saveboard is made from recycled packaging materials like milk and juice cartons, and one board saves more than 500 cartons going to landfill. Saveboard is circular, too – when it’s done its job here, it’ll be upcycled again into new Saveboard.

This is all part of our efforts to reduce our carbon footprint and demonstrate sustainable practices.

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 understand the unmet social needs in our community. We'll also seek to identify how people 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
• Council will determine the way forward.

Depending on the timing for a new community centre, we'll :

• • create a concept design and ideas, and then engage our communities again to test and refine ideas
  • 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.

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.

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.

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.