There’s a bit of work to do yet but soon one of the handful of flat-pack builds taking shape in the Raglan Club car park will be opening its doors as the brand new premises of an institution about town, the Lions op shop.
“There’s not too much to be done,” local builder Glenn Rangitonga assured the Chronicle as he and a small team of local tradies – all volunteers, like himself – were busy early this week adding final touches like a deck and ramp at the entranceway.
When all the facilities like water and power are hooked up in a week or so, Glenn reckoned, it would be back to business as usual for the Lions ladies who run the popular second-hand clothes and wares shop.
The service club-run op shop reluctantly shut its doors in downtown Wallis St a few months ago – after 40-odd years of trading in Whaingaroa – and its faithful volunteer workers have been desperately seeking some kind of retail outlet from which to carry on their good work.
Now they’ll be able to do just that – in a prime space literally just off the busy main street, in a corner of the club car park backing on to Bow St Gallery’s nursery – for just a ‘peppercorn’ or nominal rent.
It’s an ideal union between the Lions Club and the Raglan Club which – its president Debbie Dalbeth points out – has ample space to share. The car park also enjoys access from both Bow and Wallis Streets.
Lions Club president Bernice Richards is thrilled the hunt for new op shop premises has “worked out perfectly”.
Debbie adds that hospitality is a hard area in which to keep on top of cash inflow at any time, so having a source of “passive income” – by better using the Raglan Club’s space and public facilities – makes good economic sense.
She’s delighted to add the Lions op shop to the Raglan Club’s other member groups or adjuncts like both the bowling club and indoor bowls, darts, snooker and travel clubs.
Then there’s the weekly Sunday school which is not “churchy”, she explains, but whose members are responsible for running raffles to help pay for community projects – in this instance, the flooring and heat-pump to help outfit the new op shop.
Meantime, local tradie Terry Yorston has come to the party with flooring done at cost, while Chill-Rite Refrigeration & Air Conditioning will install the heat-pump for free.
Other local businesses to have volunteered time and resources to the project include Cornes Contracting – who got the digger out and cleared the peripheral area for cabling – Tony Craven Electrical, The Gate & Fence Company and Raglan Locksmiths.
Debbie insists Raglan Club is a community organisation and that “we all work together”.
With the addition recently of a Saturday market to be held twice-a-month in the Club’s car park, she is looking forward now to the space becoming a lively hub of community activity; in turn benefitting the new Lions op shop and the businesses that will take up the other two flat-pack builds on site.
Edith Symes
