Xyst was commissioned by Nelson City Council to undertake a business case to understand whether an artificial turf should be developed in the district to address the shortage of quality training grounds or whether this could be achieved through other opportunities.
The business case explored two options, considering environmental impacts, economic benefits, community demand, and explored the capital costs and ongoing operational costs.
While access to an artificial turf had the potential to increase training/playing capacity to the field network, it did not justify the investment to meet community demand, given the current overall surpluses in capacity. It was found that further investigation was required to understand what could be achieved by increasing the training use of competition fields with increased lighting and drainage improvements.
