Popular sports park faces closure as troubled Woolston Club puts land up for urgent sale
Friday, 13 March 2026
A busy Christchurch sports ground and football club home ground is at risk of closure after its owner put it up for urgent sale to ease its heavily strained finances.
The Woolston Club is selling two thirds of its large landholding on Hargood St in Woolston, including Garrick Memorial Park.
The club will keep its own clubrooms and facilities, which sit alongside.
The park is the home ground of the Cashmere Technical Football Club, which wants the city council to buy the ground, and has been used for FIFA Football World Cup competitions. It is also used for club cricket, and has hosted touch rugby.
The 4.75ha for sale is being advertised as a redevelopment site in five titles, to be sold by a March 31 deadline.
It is zoned for housing, and is big enough for a subdivision with about 70 homes. A subdivision design has already been drawn up for the land.
On February 23 the Woolston Club’s board sent a confidential letter to members saying the club is “facing sustained financial pressure” in the face of significantly increased operating and maintenance costs, and revenue has not kept pace.
This has led to ongoing financial strain, dwindling cash reserves, deferring essential maintenance, and another upcoming financial loss, the letter said.
As well as trying to boost membership and revenue, the club will sell Garrick Park to raise cash for overdue repairs and maintenance, and to reinvest in the club “to stabilise the club’s financial position” and “provide working capital”, the letter says.
The club’s president, Fred Wilmot, stepped down last month, telling members in a written statement it was “due to developments within both the club and the board”.
His resignation followed a contentious annual general meeting attended by a security guard and a lawyer, one member told The Press anonymously. The member said there are “serious communication and personality issues in the club”.
The club opened in 1956 as the Woolston Working Men’s Club, and has bar, restaurant, meeting, entertainment and sports facilities. It has about 2500 members.
It recently sold its adjacent bowling greens and pavilion for $750,000 to the St Albans Park Sports Club. The sale was settled in May last year.
According to its latest financial records, the club reported a $438,000 deficit for the year to March 2025, following a $449,000 deficit the previous year. It has assets worth an estimated $9.45m, and liabilities of $1.3m.
The Woolston Club’s general manager, Mark McGuinness, said the club has been maintaining Garrick Park for 70 years with very little financial help.
“Like all clubs, it is fairly tough in hospitality at the moment, and costs have increased markedly. There’s a lot of groups who have used Garrick Park over the years, and we’ve carried the cost.”
The property has a pavilion, changing rooms and a car park. It has access onto both Hargood St and Ferry Rd.
McGuinness said the grassed areas were “very expensive to maintain” and this year will cost the club $100,000.
“We get no support from some of the people that use it, so we are looking to sell.
“We are trying to find a buyer that means the green space can stay. But it might go to a property developer.”
He said the council pays a “peppercorn rental” to use the park’s cricket grounds for club games, and the Cashmere Technical club contributes to ground maintenance costs.
The arrangement with the council is “an unusual agreement to make sure the council has ground space in the part of town, and we wanted to keep it open”, he said.
The Cashmere Technical Football Club, the South Island’s biggest football club, was formed in a merger of the Cashmere and Woolston Technical clubs. The latter was always based at the Woolston Club and Garrick Park.
The club last year asked the city council to buy the park.
No-one at the club replied to an opportunity to comment on Thursday.
The council’s head of parks, Rupert Bool, told The Press “staff conversations around Garrick Memorial Park are ongoing”.
Other Christchurch clubs have had to sell assets in the face of financial struggles. The indebted Cashmere Club sold surplus land to housing developer Brooksfield, while both the Papanui and Christchurch Memorial RSA clubs have sold premises. The Lyttelton Club remains open after gaining a reprieve from potential closure.