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The bid for survival behind the Blue Door
One of the country’s longest-running school programmes is treading a narrow path in a hotly-contested space.
The situation’s as tight as the tramlines that once ran down to the big, corrugated iron shed at Bayswater Wharf on Auckland’s North Shore. Everyone on the peninsula knows it as the Blue Shed, and that’s good enough for the site locator on Google maps.
There’s a bright blue door at one end, but not so much blue down the length of this ancient tram barn - more faded grey with a roof that’s had decades of salt-water weathering, which has left it rust-ridden and leaky.
Another bright blue door at the far end opens into an annexe that’s also letting in the rain.
Portholes with yellow framing add a maritime theme, to a rowing institution desperately
trying to stay afloat.
Club president Joanna Gilbert unlocks the door and we step into a small reception area where two gold-painted plaster lions stand guard. Welcome to the Takapuna Grammar School Rowing Club (TGSRC). It’s not flash, but it’ll do just fine.
The Blue Shed at Bayswater Wharf in Auckland which Takapuna Grammar Rowing has been calling home for 23 years. Pictures: Andy Hay
The two lions seem appropriate, given there are two ongoing challenges to the club’s continued existence at Bayswater. Here’s their predicament:
The club started using the Blue Shed on the eastern side of the wharf around 23 years ago. Back then, it was virtually vacant aside from a small yacht-building operation down one end of the 40m-long building. For the past 10 years TGSRC has been on a month-by-month lease with Auckland Council.
The building and land it sits on was administered by the Council’s redevelopment agency Eke Panuku (which was recently abolished – with its functions to be integrated back inside the Council) and is earmarked as the site for a major Auckland Transport project for a ferry terminal and bus hub, leaving the club very vulnerable to being left homeless.
“Every few years it’ll bubble up again,” says Joanna. “We’re going to be evicted...the council needs it for the ferry terminal, and then it dies again, then it bubbles up and then it dies again.
“The challenge for us is that we would like to invest in this facility, repair the roof and all
those sorts of things, but as a charitable organisation it’s difficult to do that when you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen.”
For now, it’s all quiet on the eastern front.
To the northwest of the Blue Shed is the adjoining property of developer Simon Herbert, who bought the 3.4ha site in 2014.
In 2021, Mr Herbert’s Bayswater Marine Holdings Ltd (BMHL) applied for resource consent to build a 121-unit residential precinct, with associated amenities including retail and parking.
The boat ramp (Takapuna Grammar’s only option to launch skiffs and coach boats from) is
on the land acquired by BMHL, and water access to the ramp from the Blue Shed requires rowers to carry their skiffs across a narrow finger of BMHL land.
The club believed aspects of the project threatened that access and posed a safety risk to
its athletes trying to get to the water. It’s been involved in multiple submissions in the resource consent process which have been frustratingly long and complex.
The original BMHL residential proposal was turned down but in 2023 a scaled down $300m
development for 78 apartments was approved.
Former TGRC president Paula Halliday says dealing with the sheer volume of paperwork
full of legalese was “overwhelming and exhausting”.
Co-ed Takapuna Grammar is one of the oldest school rowing programmes in the country.
It’s been around since 1937 and was one of the earliest participants in the Auckland secondary schools Head of Harbour championship.
The sport has gone into recess a couple of times over the years but is arguably enjoying itsgreatest level of participation and success. If you crunch the numbers, almost 1 in every 20 students at the school is participating in rowing.
But over those long years, finding a true home has been a challenge.
When the programme was revived in 1983, they rowed out of West End RC on the Auckland side of the Waitemata Harbour at St Mary’s Bay.
That was a decent morning commute in and out of the bottleneck that is Devonport.
Barbara Iversen, who helped recharge Takapuna Grammar rowing with her husband Malcolm, remembers that back then, West End didn’t permit female rowing membership, so the girls were registered at St George’s RC in Panmure. They were allowed to train out of West End but rowed in red tee shirts to reflect the distinction.
When West End moved to the Whau River in West Auckland, the school had to relocate.
Over the years they’ve split the programme into juniors and seniors...the seniors rowing
out of the old Caesar Roose warehouse at Mercer (now home to Counties-Manukau RC), the juniors out of Carmel College on Lake Pupuke on the North Shore. Both venues had their drawbacks.
Paula Halliday remembers the Mercer option falling over when the kids were struggling to stay awake in class and their studies started to suffer from getting home as late as 9pm from rowing.
“It was when my daughter rowed,” says Paula. “They gave it a good go - trying to do homework in the vans driving to and from Mercer, but it just wasn’t tenable.”
At Pupuke, former coach Terry Tidbury was trying to marshall multiple crews from the
coxswain’s seat because coach boats weren’t allowed on the water.
At one stage they trained out of the old naval base at Fort Cautley above Devonport’s
Narrow Neck Beach, but the Rangitoto Channel was never going to be a realistic option for
flat-water rowing, and they had to haul boats a long way from their shed.
They tried things out of Waitemata Rowing Club in Te Atatu South. The commute in
Auckland’s rush hour made that too steep a proposition and then they also had the arrival
of the West Harbour ferries which compromised training water.
They’ve towed boats out to Rame Rd in Greenhithe, home of North Shore Rowing Club and Westlake Girls, but there was no secure boat housing so that became a liability and impractical.
The club had the option on the old Takapuna Fire Brigade site, also at Lake Pupuke, but again, access to water was severely restricted by distance to the lakefront, and
residents objected over the early morning noise of megaphones, which is just about the only effective way you can coach at Pupuke when you can’t get on the water as a coach.
“The kids have tried very hard and we've tried a thousand ways to do this,” says Paula.
Takapuna Grammar Rowing has had many homes since the programme was established in 1937.
(1) Takapuna Grammar School (2) Bayswater Wharf (3) WERC, St Marys Bay (4) Waitemata Rowing Club, Te Atatu
(5) Carmel College, Lake Pupuke (6) North Shore Rowing Club, Lake Pupuke (7) Pumphouse, Lake Pupuke (8) 41-43 Killarney St, Takapuna
(9) NSRC, Greenhithe (10) Fort Cautley, Narrow Neck Beach
Four words have become central to Takapuna Grammar’s cause as Joanna walks us out on to the area by the boat ramp. She waves an imaginary piece of paper and tells me about the signed Memorandum of Understanding from BMHL to ensure “safe and unimpeded access” to the water.
For now, those words are a treasured lifeline to survival, although recently a new challenge to the viability of the club has arisen.
BMHL has applied to build a four-storey dry stack facility to house more than 150 boats, right next to the Blue Shed – with water access for the stored boats to be via the boat ramp – the sole viable means of water access for rowers carrying their skiffs (typically in the semi-darkness of an early morning).
BMHL is seeking to have the dry-stack resource consent considered on a non-publicly-notified basis. Non-notified applications typically proceed more quickly because there is no avenue for any input into the process by the public or other interested persons.
For TGSRC, “safe and unimpeded access” has never been more important, especially should they be evicted from the Blue Shed.
“The club’s worked really hard to build and maintain a good working relationship with BMHL,” says Joanna. “And BMHL acknowledged that any sustained restriction of access to the boat ramp, particularly during the rowing season, could be fatal to TGSRC and the rowing activities of not only the current athletes but also future generations of student athletes.”
Knowing the Blue Shed remained a month-by-month proposition, in 2016 the club applied to lease an Auckland Council-owned section just north-east of their boathouse, which it hopes to develop as a long-term and secure footing for rowing at Bayswater.
But there’s no viable water access there – that would require resource consent, dredging and extensive infrastructure, which currently looks uneconomic.
For TGSRC the current boat ramp really is Option A, B and C.
Joanna acknowledges economic constraints are affecting all parties in this long-running saga.
“In a period of council restructuring and belt-tightening, we realise the difficulties associated with the council giving commitments that will involve funding or approvals affecting the use and enjoyment of what are essentially community assets.
“By the same token, we recognise that BMHL has the ability to develop its land and is navigating a difficult and expensive tightrope affecting a prime coastal site. With good, open dialogue we’re hopeful solutions can be found that don’t compromise the parties’ rights or expose ratepayers to unnecessary risk and leave open Auckland Transport’s development pathway for a future ferry terminal, whilst maintaining safe and unimpeded water access for rowers.”
The boat storage building being proposed for Bayswater Wharf. Picture: Paul Brown & Associates
The ramp at Bayswater Wharf, Takapuna Grammar's only viable option for getting on the water and owned by Bayswater Marine Holdings Ltd. No access would mean the end of the club on its present site.
After two years Joanna’s tenure as president is almost over. As a rowing parent of daughters Keira and Zoe Penny, the last few years have been a lot – leading the stressful and relentless cause to keep rowing alive at Takapuna Grammar, as well as the other
functions of being the president of a rowing club, on top of a demanding role as GM Transformation at Air New Zealand.
As her predecessor Paula Halliday describes it: “A full-time job on top of a full-time job; being a president of a rowing club for someone that also has a full-time job.”
It’s volunteerism at the next level. For Joanna and Paula Halliday, it’s all about the kids and the surrounding area they call home.
“We've had some great successes, but actually, the community element of our club is far
more than the success,” says Paula. “I know this sounds dramatic, but it has actually changed people's lives for the better...there's many a parent exceptionally grateful for how their children have navigated some significant challenges through being able to access
rowing.
“You could literally stand anywhere in Devonport or Takapuna and someone will either have had a family member or a close friend that's benefited from that rowing club.”
Almost 1 in 20 students at Takapuna Grammar row for the school. But more and more pressure is coming on the place they've called home for 23 years.
Driving out of Bayswater Wharf I’m struck by the idea that there must be a solution to meet the needs of the interested parties.
As I pass the near derelict Takapuna Boating Club, which is earmarked for revival as a result of recent efforts that included MP for North Shore Simon Watts securing a law change to allow commercial use of this heritage building, I’m struck by the idea that has everything to do with the road I’m on – named in honour of a former Takapuna Grammar student who once lived nearby.
As teenagers, he and his brother Tony attempted to cast their own lead keel in a bathtub in the backyard of their parents’ home for a boat they were building themselves. Enterprising, can-do kids.
He would go on, amongst many other things, to skipper Lion New Zealand in the Whitbread round-the-world-race in 1985/86.
By now, you’ll know who I’m talking about.
So, as I drove up Sir Peter Blake Parade I thought of the yachtie who gave us Red Socks in that famous America’s Cup win, the student from the school with the lion crest aboard Lion New Zealand, and of the two gold lions standing sentinel behind the blue door in the Blue Shed at Takapuna Grammar Rowing Club.
I wondered what he’d make of all this if he was still alive.
Of balancing private enterprise and public access, commercial considerations and recreational aspirations, corporate and community. What Sir Peter Blake would say we’ll never know. We can only guess, but cool heads are needed to calm these tricky waters.
Andy Hay
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- Home
- /
- School Rowing
- /
- The bid for...
The bid for survival behind the Blue Door
One of the country’s longest-running school programmes is treading a narrow path in a hotly-contested space.
The situation’s as tight as the tramlines that once ran down to the big, corrugated iron shed at Bayswater Wharf on Auckland’s North Shore. Everyone on the peninsula knows it as the Blue Shed, and that’s good enough for the site locator on Google maps.
There’s a bright blue door at one end, but not so much blue down the length of this ancient tram barn - more faded grey with a roof that’s had decades of salt-water weathering, which has left it rust-ridden and leaky.
Another bright blue door at the far end opens into an annexe that’s also letting in the rain.
Portholes with yellow framing add a maritime theme, to a rowing institution desperately
trying to stay afloat.
Club president Joanna Gilbert unlocks the door and we step into a small reception area where two gold-painted plaster lions stand guard. Welcome to the Takapuna Grammar School Rowing Club (TGSRC). It’s not flash, but it’ll do just fine.
The Blue Shed at Bayswater Wharf in Auckland which Takapuna Grammar Rowing has been calling home for 23 years. Pictures: Andy Hay
The two lions seem appropriate, given there are two ongoing challenges to the club’s continued existence at Bayswater. Here’s their predicament:
The club started using the Blue Shed on the eastern side of the wharf around 23 years ago. Back then, it was virtually vacant aside from a small yacht-building operation down one end of the 40m-long building. For the past 10 years TGSRC has been on a month-by-month lease with Auckland Council.
The building and land it sits on was administered by the Council’s redevelopment agency Eke Panuku (which was recently abolished – with its functions to be integrated back inside the Council) and is earmarked as the site for a major Auckland Transport project for a ferry terminal and bus hub, leaving the club very vulnerable to being left homeless.
“Every few years it’ll bubble up again,” says Joanna. “We’re going to be evicted...the council needs it for the ferry terminal, and then it dies again, then it bubbles up and then it dies again.
“The challenge for us is that we would like to invest in this facility, repair the roof and all
those sorts of things, but as a charitable organisation it’s difficult to do that when you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen.”
For now, it’s all quiet on the eastern front.
To the northwest of the Blue Shed is the adjoining property of developer Simon Herbert, who bought the 3.4ha site in 2014.
In 2021, Mr Herbert’s Bayswater Marine Holdings Ltd (BMHL) applied for resource consent to build a 121-unit residential precinct, with associated amenities including retail and parking.
The boat ramp (Takapuna Grammar’s only option to launch skiffs and coach boats from) is
on the land acquired by BMHL, and water access to the ramp from the Blue Shed requires rowers to carry their skiffs across a narrow finger of BMHL land.
The club believed aspects of the project threatened that access and posed a safety risk to
its athletes trying to get to the water. It’s been involved in multiple submissions in the resource consent process which have been frustratingly long and complex.
The original BMHL residential proposal was turned down but in 2023 a scaled down $300m
development for 78 apartments was approved.
Former TGRC president Paula Halliday says dealing with the sheer volume of paperwork
full of legalese was “overwhelming and exhausting”.
Co-ed Takapuna Grammar is one of the oldest school rowing programmes in the country.
It’s been around since 1937 and was one of the earliest participants in the Auckland secondary schools Head of Harbour championship.
The sport has gone into recess a couple of times over the years but is arguably enjoying itsgreatest level of participation and success. If you crunch the numbers, almost 1 in every 20 students at the school is participating in rowing.
But over those long years, finding a true home has been a challenge.
When the programme was revived in 1983, they rowed out of West End RC on the Auckland side of the Waitemata Harbour at St Mary’s Bay.
That was a decent morning commute in and out of the bottleneck that is Devonport.
Barbara Iversen, who helped recharge Takapuna Grammar rowing with her husband Malcolm, remembers that back then, West End didn’t permit female rowing membership, so the girls were registered at St George’s RC in Panmure. They were allowed to train out of West End but rowed in red tee shirts to reflect the distinction.
When West End moved to the Whau River in West Auckland, the school had to relocate.
Over the years they’ve split the programme into juniors and seniors...the seniors rowing
out of the old Caesar Roose warehouse at Mercer (now home to Counties-Manukau RC), the juniors out of Carmel College on Lake Pupuke on the North Shore. Both venues had their drawbacks.
Paula Halliday remembers the Mercer option falling over when the kids were struggling to stay awake in class and their studies started to suffer from getting home as late as 9pm from rowing.
“It was when my daughter rowed,” says Paula. “They gave it a good go - trying to do homework in the vans driving to and from Mercer, but it just wasn’t tenable.”
At Pupuke, former coach Terry Tidbury was trying to marshall multiple crews from the
coxswain’s seat because coach boats weren’t allowed on the water.
At one stage they trained out of the old naval base at Fort Cautley above Devonport’s
Narrow Neck Beach, but the Rangitoto Channel was never going to be a realistic option for
flat-water rowing, and they had to haul boats a long way from their shed.
They tried things out of Waitemata Rowing Club in Te Atatu South. The commute in
Auckland’s rush hour made that too steep a proposition and then they also had the arrival
of the West Harbour ferries which compromised training water.
They’ve towed boats out to Rame Rd in Greenhithe, home of North Shore Rowing Club and Westlake Girls, but there was no secure boat housing so that became a liability and impractical.
The club had the option on the old Takapuna Fire Brigade site, also at Lake Pupuke, but again, access to water was severely restricted by distance to the lakefront, and
residents objected over the early morning noise of megaphones, which is just about the only effective way you can coach at Pupuke when you can’t get on the water as a coach.
“The kids have tried very hard and we've tried a thousand ways to do this,” says Paula.
Takapuna Grammar Rowing has had many homes since the programme was established in 1937.
(1) Takapuna Grammar School (2) Bayswater Wharf (3) WERC, St Marys Bay (4) Waitemata Rowing Club, Te Atatu
(5) Carmel College, Lake Pupuke (6) North Shore Rowing Club, Lake Pupuke (7) Pumphouse, Lake Pupuke (8) 41-43 Killarney St, Takapuna
(9) NSRC, Greenhithe (10) Fort Cautley, Narrow Neck Beach
Four words have become central to Takapuna Grammar’s cause as Joanna walks us out on to the area by the boat ramp. She waves an imaginary piece of paper and tells me about the signed Memorandum of Understanding from BMHL to ensure “safe and unimpeded access” to the water.
For now, those words are a treasured lifeline to survival, although recently a new challenge to the viability of the club has arisen.
BMHL has applied to build a four-storey dry stack facility to house more than 150 boats, right next to the Blue Shed – with water access for the stored boats to be via the boat ramp – the sole viable means of water access for rowers carrying their skiffs (typically in the semi-darkness of an early morning).
BMHL is seeking to have the dry-stack resource consent considered on a non-publicly-notified basis. Non-notified applications typically proceed more quickly because there is no avenue for any input into the process by the public or other interested persons.
For TGSRC, “safe and unimpeded access” has never been more important, especially should they be evicted from the Blue Shed.
“The club’s worked really hard to build and maintain a good working relationship with BMHL,” says Joanna. “And BMHL acknowledged that any sustained restriction of access to the boat ramp, particularly during the rowing season, could be fatal to TGSRC and the rowing activities of not only the current athletes but also future generations of student athletes.”
Knowing the Blue Shed remained a month-by-month proposition, in 2016 the club applied to lease an Auckland Council-owned section just north-east of their boathouse, which it hopes to develop as a long-term and secure footing for rowing at Bayswater.
But there’s no viable water access there – that would require resource consent, dredging and extensive infrastructure, which currently looks uneconomic.
For TGSRC the current boat ramp really is Option A, B and C.
Joanna acknowledges economic constraints are affecting all parties in this long-running saga.
“In a period of council restructuring and belt-tightening, we realise the difficulties associated with the council giving commitments that will involve funding or approvals affecting the use and enjoyment of what are essentially community assets.
“By the same token, we recognise that BMHL has the ability to develop its land and is navigating a difficult and expensive tightrope affecting a prime coastal site. With good, open dialogue we’re hopeful solutions can be found that don’t compromise the parties’ rights or expose ratepayers to unnecessary risk and leave open Auckland Transport’s development pathway for a future ferry terminal, whilst maintaining safe and unimpeded water access for rowers.”
The boat storage building being proposed for Bayswater Wharf. Picture: Paul Brown & Associates
The ramp at Bayswater Wharf, Takapuna Grammar's only viable option for getting on the water and owned by Bayswater Marine Holdings Ltd. No access would mean the end of the club on its present site.
After two years Joanna’s tenure as president is almost over. As a rowing parent of daughters Keira and Zoe Penny, the last few years have been a lot – leading the stressful and relentless cause to keep rowing alive at Takapuna Grammar, as well as the other
functions of being the president of a rowing club, on top of a demanding role as GM Transformation at Air New Zealand.
As her predecessor Paula Halliday describes it: “A full-time job on top of a full-time job; being a president of a rowing club for someone that also has a full-time job.”
It’s volunteerism at the next level. For Joanna and Paula Halliday, it’s all about the kids and the surrounding area they call home.
“We've had some great successes, but actually, the community element of our club is far
more than the success,” says Paula. “I know this sounds dramatic, but it has actually changed people's lives for the better...there's many a parent exceptionally grateful for how their children have navigated some significant challenges through being able to access
rowing.
“You could literally stand anywhere in Devonport or Takapuna and someone will either have had a family member or a close friend that's benefited from that rowing club.”
Almost 1 in 20 students at Takapuna Grammar row for the school. But more and more pressure is coming on the place they've called home for 23 years.
Driving out of Bayswater Wharf I’m struck by the idea that there must be a solution to meet the needs of the interested parties.
As I pass the near derelict Takapuna Boating Club, which is earmarked for revival as a result of recent efforts that included MP for North Shore Simon Watts securing a law change to allow commercial use of this heritage building, I’m struck by the idea that has everything to do with the road I’m on – named in honour of a former Takapuna Grammar student who once lived nearby.
As teenagers, he and his brother Tony attempted to cast their own lead keel in a bathtub in the backyard of their parents’ home for a boat they were building themselves. Enterprising, can-do kids.
He would go on, amongst many other things, to skipper Lion New Zealand in the Whitbread round-the-world-race in 1985/86.
By now, you’ll know who I’m talking about.
So, as I drove up Sir Peter Blake Parade I thought of the yachtie who gave us Red Socks in that famous America’s Cup win, the student from the school with the lion crest aboard Lion New Zealand, and of the two gold lions standing sentinel behind the blue door in the Blue Shed at Takapuna Grammar Rowing Club.
I wondered what he’d make of all this if he was still alive.
Of balancing private enterprise and public access, commercial considerations and recreational aspirations, corporate and community. What Sir Peter Blake would say we’ll never know. We can only guess, but cool heads are needed to calm these tricky waters.
