Wellington Indoor Sports to close one of its sites

A Wellington indoor sports centre is shutting one of its sites after nearly two decades.

Wellington Indoor Sports (WIS) announced it would be closing its City Station location on 31 October after KiwiRail ended its lease.

The company's director Mukesh Dayal said it was "pretty much the end of an era".

He said the venue had served 200 sports teams.

He said the company's Shed 1 location would remain open, but this didn't have space for indoor cricket or netball. He was looking for another venue that was the right size and height for to accommodate a court.

"It's hard to find locations like that within Wellington."

Dayal said he wanted to relocate some staff to Hutt Indoor Sports, but others would need to find other jobs.

"I just feel sorry for the staff, really."

Wellington Indoor Sports and KiwiRail had the property revalued separately a couple of years ago, Dayal said.

He said KiwiRail renewed a two-year lease with a 20 percent rent increase in line with Wellington Indoor Sports' valuation - the lesser of the two.

He said KiwiRail offered to renew the lease for another year, with the agreement it could break the lease if it found a tenant who would pay rent in line with KiwiRail's higher valuation of the property.

A spokesperson for KiwiRail said details about the arrangement were commercially confidential.

"KiwiRail has finalised a lease agreement with a new tenant. The new tenancy is also sports related," the spokesperson said.

Dayal said he had tried to get help from Wellington City Council and Associate Minister for Sport Chris Bishop, who he said passed the request on to Minister for Sport Mark Mitchell.

But he said nobody was able to intervene in the negotiation of a commercial lease.

He said he would have been willing to break even on the location but not take a loss and so had to close.

Fans expressed their disappointment online.

One wrote in the comments of WIS' Facebook announcement: "This is so sad. But thank you to the amazing team behind the scenes who kept things so fun for so long."

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