Bethlehem Te Puna Lions members are amongst a number of groups that have lost their prized and ample community meeting place.

A cascade of events resulting in the unfortunate outcome was triggered by an initial plan from the Te Puna Community Centre to upgrade the building's two sets of outside stairs.

The Bethlehem Te Puna Lions Club has for many years held their meetings on the top floor.

'We had an engineer's report done a year ago, which said the building was okay for occupation but the stairs needed replacing,” says Te Puna Community Centre treasurer Doug Morris, who is also a member of the Lions club.

Doug says the engineer's report cost the community centre $3000.

'But we got it done as we wanted to improve the facilities and open it up to more groups. The engineer said it was habitable.”

Te Puna Community Centre secretary Jeff Brownless says when the earthquake assessment was done by the engineer the building was up to code.

'But the stairs were assessed as being unsafe so that triggered us to replace them,” says Jeff.

The centre committee then approached Western Bay of Plenty District Council for funds to replace the two sets of wooden stairs with steel ones.

'We had quotes for $40,000 and $70,000 to replace the stairs,” says Doug.

'Before approving it, council sent out a building inspector who ended up finding more problems – with the decking and rot. They weren't happy with it.”

Doug says the council's building inspector's report, which came out last month, shows that $1.2 million needs to be spent to bring the building up to code.

'When that first report came out showing problems related to the stairs about three months ago, that's when the Te Puna Community Centre condemned the use of upstairs.”

This meant that the Lions group, the bridge group and Pirirakau all lost use of the upstairs facility within a fortnight. Tape was put around the stairs to ban people from accessing the second floor.

'We all had to find other homes until further investigations have been done,” says Doug.

The Bethlehem Te Puna Lions relocated in the meantime to The Vines for their meetings, held twice monthly.

Over the years, the community centre, located at Maramatanga Park has been used by the Te Puna Tennis Club, a social club, bridge club, Jujitsu, soccer, an Arabian dance group, a miniature plane group and the Bethlehem Te Puna Lions. A rugby club building and a scout hall are also located at Maramatanga Park.

With the future of the building up in the air, questions are being raised around how rates paid by ratepayers are allocated, and what options the future holds.

The community centre committee are planning to hold meetings with other key stakeholders as the decision to upgrade, demolish and/or replace the building are discussed.