The Howick Pakuranga Baseball Club has committed $325,000 to fix flood-prone fields at Lloyd Elsmore Park, but says a funding gap and council hurdles are holding it back
Flooded fields at Lloyd Elsmore Park are costing the Howick Pakuranga Baseball Club 25 to 30 playing days a season, its president has told the Howick Local Board, as the club presses for a long-delayed drainage and lighting upgrade.
“Lloyd Elsmore Park [is] arguably Auckland’s finest park, yet baseball fields remain a liability,” club president Mike Bongiovanni told the Board in a deputation.
The club is seeking $125,000 toward a project of about $450,000, having already committed $325,000 itself, with the request split between $75,000 for drainage and $50,000 for lights.
“Every season, club members donate hundreds of hours maintaining fields that should drain automatically,” Bongiovanni said, describing it as time “away from coaching, from development, from growing the game”.
The club said its 2025-26 national tournament had to be moved to the North Shore for a day after fields were unplayable, despite seven volunteers spending 84 hours trying to prepare them.
The push has dragged on for years. Bongiovanni told the AUT news publication Te Waha Nui in March that the club’s privately funded plan had been stuck in council process for more than two years.
“No real fault of the council’s, the reality seems as if they don’t know how to accept the money,” he said. “What are we supposed to do? Where are we supposed to go? How are we supposed to get this done?”
Auckland Council said each offer of private funding was “assessed on merit and feasibility”, and that it would need to consider the ongoing electricity and maintenance costs of any lights, as well as effects on neighbouring homes from their height and brightness.
The club has more than 250 active players, with more than 20 playing overseas in the United States and Australia, and has hosted national championships and Little League Oceania qualifiers at Lloyd Elsmore since 2024.
Bongiovanni said lights would allow year-round training, which the club argued was vital as baseball in New Zealand approached what it called its “Steven Adams moment”, predicting that when “a Kiwi makes the Major Leagues, the sport will surge”.
One of the club’s life members, he said, “would like lights to be his legacy”.
The neighbouring Pakuranga United Rugby Club also wants lit training fields, the club noted, so a single investment could serve both.
“Baseball teaches our tamariki resilience,” the club said, “how to face failure, overcome adversity, and keep stepping up to the plate. With your support, we give more kids that chance.”
The deputation was made on 28 May, alongside Baseball New Zealand chairman Glen Campbell and general manager Mark Cooper. The Board thanked the club but made no funding decision, leaving the drainage and lighting request to be considered in a future work programme.
