Velodrome consent application to be lodged before February

ROUNDABOUT: Napier City Council will seek a resource consent immediately for a Multi-Use Sports Facility with a raised velodrome. PHOTO/FILE

An immediate resource consent application for the controversial Napier multi-use Sports Facility will be lodged by Napier City Council following a decision yesterday by the council's Strategy and Infrastructure Committee.

The facility includes a velodrome and was last year estimated to cost $20 million.

The council's community services director Antoinette Campbell asked the committee to lodge an urgent resource consent application before February 1 to facilitate a funding application to the New Zealand Lottery Grants Board's Significant Projects Fund.

Applications to the fund were usually made alongside approved resource consent, she said.

A resource consent application would be ready to lodge before February 1, when fund applications opened, but would not be approved before March 15, when applications closed.

"Lottery do however permit applications for funding provided that a resource consent has been lodged prior to the fund opening and is well underway by the time applications are received and considered," she said.

The viability of the project will be disclosed at a February 14 seminar where a business case, prepared at a cost of $500,000, will be presented.

Councillors will decide whether to proceed with the facility at a February 22 meeting.

Yesterday, before granting Ms Campbell's request for an urgent decision, the committee amended the request so an application to the fund could not be made until after February 22.

Ms Campbell said the fund was not an annual allocation and it was unknown when it might be available again.

It provides grants to purchase, create or improve community assets that have regional or national significance with a cost of $3 million or more.

Located adjacent to Pettigrew Green Arena the facility was controversial because many baulked at the cost of accommodating the minority sport of track cycling.

By elevating the velodrome track the facility would provide needed court space for indoor sports.

Progress on the facility was put on hold last year until after local body elections, so the newly-elected council could decide whether or not to proceed.

Also proposed as a regional facility is AUT Millennium Hawke's Bay, to be built at the Hawke's Bay Regional Sports Park.

Launched in October and led by Sir Graeme Avery, it plans to build a community health and fitness centre

The later stage of the $15 million project includes an Olympic pool.