NEW GRANDSTAND AT RICCARTON

Press, Volume C, Issue 29503, 3 May 1961, Page 4

NEW GRANDSTAND AT RICCARTON

£lOO,OOO To Be Spent By Club

The Canterbury Jockey Club will spend more than £lOO,OOO on a new grandstand at Rieearton. Tenders win be called towards the end of this year, a start on the building will be made early next year, and the stand should be finished for the 1962 New Zealand Cup meeting. These proposals were approved yesterday by the committee of the club.

The new stand will be built on the site of the present Leger stand, and will be given over entirely to members. But the public will benefit as well by “inheriting" all the seating and facilities for members in the main grandstand on the course. The move for a new stand was precipitated by a northwesterly gale which unroofed the Leger stand two days before the Grand National Steeplechase day at Riecarton last August. The dub’s committee considered costs of roofing the Leger stand again, and found them prohibitive for repairs to be done to an old structure. The club has sought the advice of an Auckland architect, Mr B V. Gillespie, who was responsible for the new grandstands at Ellerslie and Te Rapa, and Rieearton next year will have a new stand very much like the new one at Te Rapa. Facilities The stand will be of prostressed concrete with a suspended roof, like the stand at Te Rapa. Facilities will be of the

best standard, even to tipback seats, and will include a luncheon room, a large bar for women and escorts, a men members’ bar, kitchen, and totalisator facilities. •

The stand will be approximately 250 ft long and 50ft in depth. With the .changeover of members to the new stand

there will be several hundred new seats available for the public in the main stand; also two women’s and escorts bars, and dining-rooms available at present only to members. The tea kiosk will also become a public eating place when the new stand is built. At present it is available to members only. When the new grandstand ,s completed the outside enclosure will pass from the scene at Rieearton, but the outside totalisator may be retained as an auxiliary. Confidence * “Our decision to spend more than £lOO,OOO is a reflection of our confidence in the future of racing at Riccarton." said Mr G. H. Grigg -hairman of the committee of the Canterbury Jockey

Club, yesterday. “There will be room for a considerable increase in our membership, now limited to 750. when we get the new stand, and that will relieve pressure on facilities for the public at the course." Mr Grigg said there was a waiting membership of 450. and it might be possible to absorb that number when the new stand was finished.

The present Leger stand will be demolished before work on the new stand can begin It is about 75 years old and was at first a singlestorey building. It adjoins the stewards' stand, the replacement of which will be one of the elub’s future projects. The main grandstand was built in 1920 and as a vantage point its top deck still compares with any of the modern giant stands in the Southern Hemisphere.