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When the Clyde Dam project on the Clutha River/Mata-Au kicked off in the 1980s bulldozers bowled the main street of upstream Cromwell but skirted the town’s 1960s-era Memorial Hall.
That left the hall with its back awkwardly to newly formed Lake Dunstan as across town a shopping mall was erected near the new state highway.
It was 2000 when debate began about what to do with the ageing hall. Nine years later a $3 million redevelopment plan was adopted in principle by the Cromwell Community Board.
Meanwhile Cromwell’s population had gone from 2800 to 4000 and the place was shaking off its rumpty reputation as a hydro town and dated rural service centre.
Vineyards were spreading, cherry orchards thriving and servicing the Wānaka and Queenstown building booms was driving lucrative new industrial development.
Young families and the semi-retired were flocking to Cromwell like a town newly discovered.
Another six years passed and 1000 more new residents arrived before the $3 million-plan was formally approved.
Neil Gillespie, Central Otago District Deputy Mayor and a Cromwell Community Board member since 1998, says there were other priorities for spending at the time, and although not ideal the building, which has featured large in his life, was still usable.
Cromwell-born Gillespie recalls hooning past the hall as a youth in his Mark I Cortina, watching movies there with his mates and eventually dancing across its wooden floor with his wife Joy at their “huge hooley” of a wedding celebration.
Up and away
After the $3 million-plan’s approval, the budget was bumped up to $4.1 million with a guesstimate of a new-build cost rather than a revamp put at $6 to $7 million.
In 2016 another bump-up for the redevelopment budget to $5.4 million was approved but a newly elected community board then stalled the project to look at alternatives.
In the following year the revamp plan briefly got going again and tenders were on the table when all was controversially halted by the board narrowly voting to seek other options.
By 2018 Cromwell’s population was 5610, having doubled since the hall debate began in 2000.
What to do to create a suitable facility for the now rapidly growing town became a divisive topic.
Fed-up residents were being lobbied by both camps – the revampers and the new-build enthusiasts.
Democratically made decisions were undone, a petition to council lodged and tensions rose at the debating table.
In 2019 a handful of residents formed the Cromwell Cultural Centre group and sought authority from council to design, build and manage a new hall.
Their rousing public meetings were well attended but following a council master-planning exercise the project was taken on by the local authority, which was given a stern message from the populous to “get on with it”.
The way we were
The situation was a stark contrast to how the original hall came about when a small country town got together and built it themselves.
Now closed for good at 63 years of age, the Memorial Hall was once the social hub of a tight-knit community of fewer than a 1000 people.
Tui Swann was 13 years old when her father, Harry MacDonnell, was building its foundations.
The coloured stone was gathered locally, Swann recalls.
“Dad split it all by hand and we used to go out and gather it and we’d ask, ‘Dad is this a good one, is this the right colour?’.”
MacDonnell had been a pharmacist who holidayed in the area. But Central Otago got under his skin and the family moved permanently to the area where he became a stone mason.
In his Inniscort St workshop he invented concrete ventilation grills for the hall with special wire inserts to stop mice getting in, Swann says.
Longtime resident Helen Scoles remembers as a child helping assemble chairs in the exciting days of fitting out the newly completed building.
From then on there wasn’t much that didn’t happen at the hall.
“Rugby and Plunket both had annual cabarets, the volunteer fire brigade held the honours nights there, there were school concerts and socials, wedding receptions, 21sts, funerals, RSA meetings and Anzac services and movies.
“There was badminton, indoor bowls, small-bore rifle shooting, ballet, operatic society performances and visiting performers like John Hore, Patrick O’Hagan and Patsy Riggir.”
TV gameshow It’s in the Bag was compulsory viewing in New Zealand during the 1970s and 80s and there was a buzz in the air the night it was filmed at the hall.
Flower and craft shows were hosted along with community concerts and plays, council meetings, polling booths and a toy library.
If one club or group was putting something on or having a working bee everyone else would help.
Many of the same people belonged to the same groups and it all worked even without social media and cellphones.
Down the line
When the dam project came along, those drawing lines on the map of what would be bulldozed and what wouldn’t avoided the Cromwell Memorial Hall locals say.
Former mayor Peter Mead reckons it would have been costly to replace so it was left standing at the end of a main street that wasn’t there anymore.
Mead, who held office from 1980 to 1986, says the hall, built as a war memorial, was the focus for activities that didn’t take place in the town’s three pubs.
He bemoans how long it is taking for a plan for a replacement hall to come to fruition despite plenty of money being spent on a new spatial plan for the town.
Gillespie, who became an administrator for the Clyde Dam project, says it’s been frustrating trying to make the right decision for a changing community.
The repeated stymying of carefully laid plans has left the town without a much-needed venue for myriad needs from the performing arts to funerals.
But that could be about to change.
In a closed meeting on November 29 community board members questioned what’s now a $43 million-budget for a new facility.
A robust business case is needed to justify such a spend, Gillespie says, which would add to rates bills that are already tipped to jump up by more than 20 percent at the next review.
Compared with earlier plans, what is now on the table feels a bit like the Taj Mahal, Gillespie says, and the cost of maintenance and eventual replacement needs to be carefully considered.
The council is also redeveloping the town’s dated Clyde Dam-era mall. Completion of that $42 million project is expected be a great relief for its resident business owners.
No end date has been set for the hall rebuild, however, with Central Otago District Council property and facilities manager Garreth Robinson telling Newsroom the project is still in the “inception stage”.
The old hall will be demolished early next year to make way for the new facility, plans for which include a 400-seat auditorium, cafe, cinema, flexible community and meeting spaces and the Cromwell Museum, according to council documents.
Local aggregates will be used in the building and the design is intended to reflect the Central Otago landscape and its people.
Funds for the build have been set aside in the council’s long-term plan, apart from about $11 million to come from grants and land sales.
Construction is pencilled in to start early next year once budgets are confirmed.
If it does completion will be in 2026, at which point the people of Cromwell might finally get to celebrate an excruciatingly long-awaited happy ending.
Made with the support of the Public Interest Journalism Fund
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