The projects included the Opera House and Municipal Buildings, Civic Square and a partial investment in a hotel.
Following great work by an independent working party (IWP) and more detailed engineering assessment it is now recommended that this money be reallocated and prioritised in the following way.
1. Strengthen the Opera House and fit a permanent covering over the Plaza to make it a first class entertainment venue. The total cost of this is around $13m.
2. Defer a decision, consultation and expenditure on the Municipal Buildings until a suitable use can be found for these.
The strengthening cost of this building is estimated at $5m and without a suitable use this cost cannot be justified. The working party suggested a suitable use would be a hotel if an investor could be found.
3. Defer further work on Civic Square until decisions on the opera house and Municipal Buildings have been made.
4. Consider the IWP's Tihei Heretaunga framework.
In my view this is a pragmatic way of handling what is unpredicted expenditure. We have simply realigned our budgets to avoid unnecessary financial stress for people.
I am also quite confident we can raise significant external money especially for Civic Square.
We will be actively working on external funding support for the Opera House and Civic Buildings however significant funds are likely to be unavailable because of the size of the problem nationally.
Many charitable funders have policies excluding earthquake strengthening.
I also wish to provide clarity around a possible hotel.
There is some conjecture about this and most of it is wrong.
Hastings is one of the only cities in New Zealand not to have a hotel.
Prior to the Opera House closure this was considered a major impediment for conference use.
This was further reinforced by recent independent work on the revitalising of the central city.
There have been at least four hotel opportunities considered previously in Hastings.
Because there is no obvious use for the Municipal Buildings the IWP has suggested these be turned into a hotel while preserving the heritage values we all cherish.
If we can find an investor we will then ask the public should we invest in the strengthening of the former Council Chamber and Assembly building.
Over the holiday period I was approached by an international investor about opportunities in Hastings and I travelled to Hong Kong and China last week to present these opportunities.
To make it very clear Council is not going to operate a hotel. We are simply trying to facilitate an investment which will turn these landmark buildings into something that will be very valuable for our city.
If we cannot find an investor then there will be no hotel.
So in the next few weeks we will be asking your views on the opera house and plaza.
We are doing so within the existing projected rate allocations.
This is an important decision and we welcome your input.
- Lawrence Yule is the Mayor of Hastings.
- Business and civic leaders, organisers, experts in their field and interest groups can contribute opinions. The views expressed here are the writer's personal opinion, and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz.
