26 April, 2026

Flagstaff Notes

By Rob Drent

Leafing back through the Flagstaff files looking for background on current stories, I occasionally come across news items of things that never happened. Often these can be great ideas or projects that are canned for one reason or another.
One of the most unfortunate in recent times was the planned – and approved – $3 million upgrade of North Shore United’s football fields. A resource consent was granted after a public hearing and it seemed all go in 2018 when Auckland Council plans were signed off by the Devonport-Takapuna Local Board. On 23 February 2018, the Flagstaff revealed the council had spent more than $200,000 on 13 reports.

Then Covid came along and the redevelopment was put on hold by the cash-strapped Auckland Council. It was a great loss for the club and the wider community.
The future of the land alongside the soccer ground remains unclear. An upgrade of the Claystore has been budgeted but what happens to the rest of the council land under a variety of tenancies is somewhat up in the air. And the old Mobil petrol station site at the front of the block remains empty. Woolworths had planned to turn the building into a direct-to-boot outlet but this idea was dropped. Asked by The Flagstaff what plans Woolworths had for the site, we were last week told there was “no update”, which I suppose means nothing is happening. Overall, that Lake Rd block is a bit of an eyesore at the entrance to Devonport. Should council be taking more of a lead to sort it out?

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The horse has already bolted on this one but the old Devonport bus shelters discussed in our story on page 31 of this issue could have been used as pick-up spots for the AT Local rideshare scheme, an electric-vehicle service that operated in Devonport on a two-year trial from 2018. People liked the service but at one stage it was costing $11 a ride. I always felt the vans should have run circuits around Devonport rather than sitting at various spots for hours waiting for rides. A similar on-demand service now operates in Timaru.

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Ultra-marathon swimmer Jono Ridler, who recently completed a 1400km swim down the east coast of the North Island ,started his ocean swimming career in Devonport. His first race was the Auckland Harbour crossing from Bayswater to the city in 2011.
He had another slightly unusual aquatic link to Devonport: In 2022 he was the first nude swimmer home in the Round North Head Classic from Windsor Reserve to Cheltenham Beach.