Waikato Times: Waikato Regional Theatre goers ‘will drive out the streeties’

Originally published in the Waikato Times, Tuesday 22 October 2024.

By Avina Vidyadharan.

Mark Servian, Momentum Waikato communications and marketing manager, says the theatre will give people a positive reason to come into town in large numbers. PHOTO: Mark Taylor / Waikato Times

Streeties defecating in public may be pushed out of the CBD once art lovers start frequenting Waikato Regional Theatre.

The theatre is one of the solutions to drive the negative element out of Hamilton city, claims Mark Servian.

Servian, Momentum Waikato’s communications and marketing manager, says the iconic theatre will give people a positive reason to come into town in large numbers.

“And crowds of sober people do tend to drive out both - the antisocial behaviour that comes from streeties and from drunken youngsters in the evening.

“It's the ebb and flow of activity in the city,” he said.

Spaces like dressing rooms and other back-of-house facilities are taking shape in the theatre. PHOTO: Kelly Hodel / Waikato Times

Servian said he had seen this trend before.

In 2013, similar stories were being told about people gathering in Embassy Park, now part of the Regional Theatre, he said.

“A lot of people were initially thinking that the solution would be to drive people out.”

As a chair of Hamilton’s Riff Raff Trust, Servian was commissioned to make the park a more welcoming place, “which we then did, and it worked”.

“It ceased to be a gathering place for negative behaviour and became a place that was very positive.

“The solution is to bring in the people who are going to behave positively.

“And that's a bit of a juggling act, because obviously people don't want to be around people behaving like that.”

A drone shot of the theatre’s progress in August shows the interior of the building taking shape. PHOTO: Mark Jephson / Waikato Times

Waikato Region Theatre moved into the next phase of construction early this week as a complex of structures appeared behind the original Hamilton Hotel facade.

Other exciting developments include the installation of the huge windows in the Foyer looking out to the Waikato River.

With structural work on Levels One through Three nearing completion, key spaces like dressing rooms, rehearsal areas and other back-of-house facilities were taking shape.

Big windows overlooking the Waikato River are part of the new theatre. Supplied

The Regional Theatre will take the place of the now-demolished Founders Theatre as Hamilton’s biggest and proudest theatre. Founders came down this year after sitting empty since 2016, when it was identified as an earthquake risk.

The Regional Theatre expects to see many of the iconic acts that took the Founders stage and more. In March this year, the Royal New Zealand Ballet said they would be delighted to hit the Regional Theatre stage at some point.

Servian said the flow of people that will go to see the shows at the theatre “will mean that the people who are behaving badly go somewhere else”.

“The people in town will drive out the streeties from it.

“If people want to go to shows at the theatre, they will go and once they've had the experience of going to shows and the crowds have driven out the negative behaviour,

it will follow on.”

While antisocial behaviour around the theatre was a bad look, it needed to go for the sake of the city, Servian said.

Short-term factors like “emergency housing disappearing” was adding to the problem, but Servian said ultimately more permanent solutions were needed.

“For the individuals, the solutions lie with the support systems, getting around them and giving them a reason to be somewhere else at that level.

“A lot of those people are clearly mentally ill.

“The people that need the support are the people in the front line who are in the food banks, in the mental health services, they need to be properly funded, and that would go a long way.”