Recent Venue Projects at Woodhill Sands
At the end of 2020, Woodhill Sands was thrilled to finalise our funding agreement with Auckland Council for the Sport and Recreation Facility Investment Fund grant, to support the development of our facilities.
This fund covers capital development of our competition arena surface, the shower block/ablutions area and some key health and safety improvements.
Recently we’ve completed work on our automated boom arm security gates, supplied by Planet Group and BarrierTek. Finishing the work started last year with the installation of the large sliding aluminium gate at the rock entrance wall, we now have underground sensors on both sides of the boom arm gate so that they’ll automatically open when approached by vehicles. Please ensure that you wait until the gate has fully lifted before travelling through it. You’ll know the gate has fully opened when the lights on the post the gate is attached to stop flashing. We hope our riders enjoy this new feature and can now enter and exit the venue from the comfort of their vehicles.
Woodhill Sands is located in a park like environment that has some impressive mature trees which provide shelter for our riders and their supporters. These trees do however require significant work to keep both the trees healthy and to ensure that people moving around the venue (and their horses) are kept safe. The Facilities Investment Fund also allowed us to carry out much needed trimming of the trees, the removal of the dead pines overhanging the covered yards and a tidy up of the back grass area of the property used for our Derby and cross-country courses. While our poplars do look like they’ve had a pretty major “hair cut”, the trees at the back of the property that were trimmed last year have already put on a lot of growth, so once spring hits we will start to see the trees leafing up again. Thanks to Nick Skeates from Skeates Tree Contractors for your support with this important project.
The next project we will be working on, will involve an upgrade to our shower block and sealing of the section of our entrance way from James Mackie Road to the rock wall and sliding gate. If any of our local community have contacts who might be able to help with portable shower blocks or concreting/drive sealing, it would be great if you could pass on their details. Please contact Jenette Bell (our Trust Manager) at jenette@woodhillsands.co.nz if you know of someone who might be able to help out with either of these projects. We always like to support local.