Committee chairman councillor Larry Baldock at the Museum and Library engagement space. Photo/Andrew Warner
Committee chairman councillor Larry Baldock at the Museum and Library engagement space. Photo/Andrew Warner
It's decision day for the museum.
In a 1pm meeting a Tauranga City Council committee will decide whether or not to push on with a project to build a museum in New Zealand's fifth-largest city.
The decision before the City Transformation Committee today is not quite that clear-cut but given there remains a big chunk of Tauranga residents who either don't want a museum or (more likely) don't want to pay for one, it's the first hurdle to pass.
The build-up to this decision has been a flurry of reports, surveys, presentations, workshops and letters to the editor.
Instead of making a recommendation to the committee, council staff have collated all the relevant data collected for the museum business case into a "multi-criteria matrix" (translation: really big table) that councillors can use to weigh variables.
The business case, by the way, has cost $463,000 to the end of October. That's in addition to the $1.2 milion the council spent looking into the museum-on-a-pier idea that fell over in 2007.
Assuming the committee is happy to proceed with a museum, the next hurdles will be picking a location, deciding how a new library (yes, that's on the table too) should feature in the plans and everyone's favourite question: how to pay for it all.
Designs prepared by architects Jasmaz showing how the bulk of the three main building options could look in location. Images/Tauranga City Council
Location-wise, both the site of the old council administration building on Willow St and the old bowling club green and carpark on Cliff Rd - favoured by iwi - will be considered.
Taking the downtown option would - as per the current options investigated - involve integrating the museum with a new central library, though revisiting a side-by-side museum and library was raised by a few councillors last week.
As for costs, those prepared by architects Jasmax have not been well received. The architects say the price reflects the sites and the aspirations of the community for a museum "experience" on par with New Zealand's best.
A few years ago the price tag for building Tauranga a museum was estimated at about $20m-25m.
A few months ago it was about $60m combined for a museum and new central library.
As of last week, those costs had ballooned to more than $100m for both facilities, with the Cliff Rd site estimated to have the highest build cost per square metre.
The new estimates prompted Tauranga MP Simon Bridges to wade into the debate, posting on Facebook that the council needed to "stop being stupid" and "forget Cliff Rd".
What might happen
Our educated guess at which ways the decision might go.
1. In the spirit of getting on with it, the committee chooses a location, accepts the current brief and price estimates and bites the bullet on cost. They put their decision forward to the full council.
2. The committee chooses to support a location and integrated/standalone option but refuses to accept the current eye-watering price estimates and asks for a scaled down brief and/or new cost estimates.
3. Councillors - staring down the barrel of an unpalatable 13.6 per cent rate increase next year - decide now is not the right time to build a museum and put the project off.
4. Not satisfied with the options on the table or the quality of investigations to date, councillors ask for more exploration - more options, more data. Bit of a fizzer.
