Funding setback for museum planners

The future of the Tropical Display House in Robbins Park will be discussed by Tauranga City Council.

Trustees planning Tauranga's long-awaited $25 million museum remain upbeat about the future of the project, despite a $100,000 setback by the city council.

The council has decided to remove the $100,000 contribution to museum resource consent costs from its 2016-17 budget.

The museum was planned to be built next to the Robbins Park rose garden in Cliff Rd, just along from the Tropical Display House that the council decided at the same meeting this week should be demolished - saving $100,000 a year. Both decisions will go out for public consultation as part of the council's 2015-25 Long Term Plan.

Tauranga Moana Museum Trust chairman Neil Te Kani said his initial thoughts about the decision were that it was not good.

"We need to understand the rationale of the council's decision."

He said the trust planned to give the council a progress report on February 10, including a funding plan for the museum.

The update would set out plans for the next two years and give the council some comfort around priorities.

Mr Te Kani said they needed to engage with the council because the resource consent funding was important for plans to build on the Cliff Rd site.

If that was taken away, it could lead to re-engaging on other sites for the museum.

He wanted to understand whether the council had any other measures or plans to assist with resource consenting.

Mr Te Kani said there had been a change of trustees and a change of chairman, and they were settling on a good direction, one that they were comfortable would get good support.

"We are the fifth largest city in New Zealand and part of the golden triangle of Auckland, Hamilton and Tauranga.

"Why don't we have a museum?"

Mr Te Kani said a museum would provide the gateway to the rest of the Western Bay of Plenty.

Trust secretary John Coster said it sounded like they needed to have a discussion with the council. The issue would be on the agenda of today's meeting of trustees.

The trust was in the process of finding $100,000 to employ a professional fundraiser. The most optimistic estimate of when the museum could open was five years, including an 18-month construction period.

There had been an informal understanding that, once the museum was built and the trust had taken over the collection of artifacts in storage at Mount Maunganui, the $500,000 a year that the council spent maintaining the collection would pass to the museum.