It was once an apple packing shed with a “disgusting men’s toilet”, but it is now flushed with 80 years of success.
Māpua Community Hall is a reputed venue on Aranui Rd, and an apple of the community’s eye.
Exuberant and formative gatherings within and just outside its walls from arts, dance, fitness and commerce have taken place since its establishment on 9 March 1945.
A de facto community hall was based in the Māpua Packing Shed from 1919, before it was legally transferred to the Māpua Hall Society in 1935 and remained a community hall until 1944, when it’s cold and unsuitable conditions became its Achilles heel. A disused packhouse on stilts at the corner of Kina Beach and Kina Peninsula Rds was obtained and the facility moved to its now 80-year home.
On Friday, 17 October, more than 100 are anticipated to mark its anniversary with a theme that could keep the doctors away, with apple decorations, and an apple packing contest, commemorating the fruitful industry in the hall’s heyday.
Deputy chairperson Mary Garner hasn’t volunteered on the committee for the full 80 years, instead periodically for two decades, and visited the hall at kindergarten age when Māpua Playcentre used it.
She says, despite the bad apple of escalating upkeep costs, its longevity was “extraordinary” and proof of the village’s “goodwill” and “high regard” for the facility.
“It’s been the absolute hub of the Māpua community, I can’t imagine what the community would be like without that hall,” she says.
“It has funerals, it has the odd wedding, it has sports groups, it has social and community groups who all meet there, it’s the absolute centre of activity.”
Mary says the hall’s $1.1 million facelift in 2013 was a landmark moment courtesy of grants and its four-person fundraising committee door-knocking “every single household” in Māpua and nearby areas for donations.
She says the hall was unimposing pre-renovation.
“It was like a typical country hall with the regular kind of vinyl formica kitchen, and a disgusting men’s toilet,” she says.
“When we were on the hall committee, for my first tenure, the committee members had to take a month at a time to clean the hall… and cleaning out the men’s toilets was one of the jobs.
“I tried everything to get that men’s urinal clean, I tried Jif and pot scrub and nothing would touch it… too many years of drunken people using it,” she says. “But it was legendary, and when we were preparing to rebuild the hall, we had a demolition party for the men’s toilet.”
Mary says when the hall got its glow-up, one of the rooms was renamed in honour of its veteran handyman, Bill Marris.
“There was nothing about that hall, the wiring and the plumbing and the general maintenance, that he didn’t know about, and, of course, he always kept the clock in the front going,” she says.
“He was a stalwart really, so it’s wonderful to have a room named after Bill.”
Chairperson Jan Heijs says additional storage and solar panels were planned as the hall now edges toward its centenary. The hall’s 80th anniversary festivities are scheduled from 6pm to 9pm.
