What’s next for Avondale Racecourse?

The first lockdown came just a week after my eldest child’s third birthday, with my youngest only six months old. I will never forget the intensity of that time, and without a doubt, a major player in our whānau’s mental health was the Avondale Racecourse. How fortunate we were, I often found myself thinking, to have such a wonderful wide open space nearby, with views out over to the Waitakeres and enough room to keep the required 2m distance from the many other walkers utilising the space for their daily walk, the only outing beyond the house most of us experienced for many weeks.

Over the years I’ve lived in Avondale, I’ve developed a close relationship with the Racecourse. It’s been a running track, cricket pitch, the place where my kids have learned to play soccer and trained for cross country, where I’ve walked, prayed, sung, and listened. It’s where I grieved my parents, listening to countless hours of ‘Griefcast’ as I paced the outer track in lieu of therapy I couldn’t afford. It’s where neighbours and I go for long catch-ups, expressing to the wind-swept fields all the agony and ecstasy of raising kids in this time and place. It has heard many, many hours of phone calls to a close friend in Dunedin, keeping us and our families connected in one of those rare and precious friendships that are with us throughout our lives. It’s where we’ve dragged a trolley bag across to the markets. It’s the by-pass that makes the walk to school together possible for my children’s little legs when work schedules allow. It’s where we’ve watched and witnessed storm birds take refuge, gradually learning the beaks and feathers we’d never seen before, learning to recognise each one, identify their personalities, movements, and preferences.

Just as it was a vital respite during the pandemic, so too was it clearly a saviour of surrounding homes, perhaps ours, during the anniversary day floods. Two very different emergencies but both examples of the Racecourse proving its value.

As I became increasingly involved with local government, learned more about the history and possible futures of this place, my thoughts so often now turn to fantasies about what it could look like one day as I walk around its vast expanse. I picture swimming pools, gardens, forests of edible trees, walking tracks, playgrounds, sports fields, water features, storytelling, topiary, all kinds of wonders. They might be mutually exclusive or impractical or wildly ambitious, but in those moments I allow myself to suspend disbelief and imagine freely.

The retention of this glorious green space, so clearly visible in the map of Auckland, can be a hard cause to balance sometimes with the clear and present need for housing and sprawl reduction. Housing is a human right, and the Auckland isthmus can’t expand forever. Aucklanders in low-paying jobs cannot be expected to live an hour or more away from most of the workplaces in favour of detached villas on quarter-acre sections within moments of central areas or transport hubs. Like the cities we visit or admire from afar, we must mature into ourselves and grow up more than out, learn to embrace rather than fear medium and high density, find new ways of being in communities, perhaps more connected and supported ways.

But I would argue that the streets surrounding the Avondale Racecourse have taken on more than their share of the housing intensification that our city needs. Six high-density developments right beside the Racecourse have opened their doors within the last three years, to say nothing of the many others within walking distance, and the increasing examples of medium-density alongside them.

Crucial to connected, thriving, higher-density housing in our area, is adequate green space, wildlife protection, flood mitigation as climate change brings increasing extreme weather events, and opportunities for recreation. Avondale Racecourse provides all this and more. To quote the Department of Conservation:

“Green space provides opportunities to partake in physical activity, strongly associated with better physical and mental health outcomes, and can play a role in both preventing and managing chronic disease.”

The Ministry of Health likewise promotes green space as essential to health and wellbeing, and links lack of it as a compounding factor in the poorer health outcomes of those from more deprived backgrounds.

Whau is an area of higher deprivation than much of Auckland, and the area around the Racecourse is almost entirely in the bottom two quintiles of the deprivation index. Retaining green space on the Racecourse is, in my view, going to be vital for the wellbeing of Whau going forwards, as well as the ecological health and climate-readiness of Tāmaki Makaurau more widely.

And I am by no means the only one who thinks this.

A few weeks ago, I was privileged to attend a public meeting held by Avondale Racecourse Alliance - a small but mighty group of people who live and/or work locally and who are passionate about the future of this space, coordinated by I Love Avondale. They shared a beautiful mock-up of what it could look like - the Whau Pool, a portion for housing, and a space for the Markets and to remember the legacy of Avondale Jockey Club, all bordering an open space with around two-thirds of the sports fields retained and ringed by walking paths and ecological features.

Avondale Racecourse Alliance, Whau Local Board, Avondale Business Association, and others have been working together for some time now to try and bring this whole process out into the open and front and centre. At the moment, I feel a great sense of optimism about the general alignment between the many groups and individuals involved.

The laundry list of arguments in favour of retaining a substantial amount of public space at Avondale Racecourse is so extensive that I have barely covered it here - I haven’t even had time to mention the markets! I am aware of course, that no matter how long the laundry list, the pockets will need to be deep. It will take collaborative, persistent, engaged advocacy from many to achieve. If anywhere could do it though, I believe that place is Avondale!