Cr Vince Cocurullo at WDC's Oruku decision meeting last year. Photo / Michael Cunningham
Cr Vince Cocurullo at WDC's Oruku decision meeting last year. Photo / Michael Cunningham
A Whangārei councillor forcing a revisit of the controversial Oruku Landing conference centre says a pared-back version of last year's proposal will be presented at today's extraordinary council meeting.
Whangārei District Council (WDC) councillor Vince Cocurullo said the new conference centre proposal may end up not costing ratepayers.
"The developers have heard people's concerns about cost and have come to us with a pared back version."
He said the new version would be a slightly smaller conference and event centre minus theatre function but still able to accommodate 1000 people standing.
Original developers Barry Trass and Ben Tomason are behind both versions of the Oruku Landing development.
Cocurullo said the paring back included WDC not buying land in the wider development to build the centre on and removing the centre's theatre aspect of its function.
More than 5000 submissions were made to WDC last year about the Oruku Landing conference and event centre. The development was expected to cost $136 million at the time the council voted nine to five to abandon the project in November last year.
Billboards at the Oruku Landing site advertise the future. Photo / Tania Whyte
Eighty per cent were against the council going ahead with the proposal, which would have had ratepayers paying for the ongoing cost of running the facility.
Cocurullo said that would potentially not be the case this time around. Instead, this work could be done by the Northland Events Centre Trust (NECT) - a WDC council-controlled-organisation (CCO) whose function is to operate and maintain Semenoff Stadium as a high-quality multi-purpose events centre.
The Oruku Landing conference and event centre was set to initially cost about $123 million and be jointly funded with at least $57m from WDC, $60m from Government and $6m from Northland Regional Council (NRC). It was to be part of the bigger, private developer's $250 million Oruku Landing hotel and apartment development on the lower Town Basin's Riverside Drive.
Cocurullo said the Government funding was potentially still available to Oruku Landing developers. This was dependent on WDC saying yes in principle to the concept.
The council last year said no to proceeding with the development, just days before the December 1 Government funding uptake deadline.
Cocurullo said the costs this time round were different.
The need to suddenly consider the Oruku Landing conference centre at an extraordinary meeting had come so that work could get underway on due diligence and business case development for those involved - should the council decide to proceed further a second time around, he said.
"We only heard about this last week," Cocurullo said.
Councillors as a whole wouldn't be making any decisions in the wake of today's meeting. However, matters were still at an early stage with extra work yet to be done before taking the next step.
Cocurullo is one of the six WDC councillors who this week forced today's extraordinary council meeting - along with Whangārei deputy mayor Greg Innes and councillors Gavin Benney, Ken Couper, Phil Halse and Carol Peters. All these councillors, except Peters, voted not to abandon the Oruku Landing conference and event centre last year.
The group's actions, announced yesterday, appeared to leave others among WDC's 14 councillors wondering.
Replying to a comment on social media, WDC councillor Nick Connop said he had no idea of the full content of the meeting about the Oruku development.
He said the signatures are the only content provided in the agenda.
"I am quite disappointed this is all ... as it is now inflaming due to lack of information," Connop said.
Peters had earlier voted to abandon the proposal, along with mayor Sheryl Mai and councillors Nick Connop, Tricia Cutforth, Shelley Deeming, Jayne Golightly, Greg Martin, Anna Murphy and Simon Reid.
Cocurullo said the extraordinary meeting was initiated so the whole council could hear more about the new development proposal, kickstarting further discussion.
He said he was in favour of anything that would progress business.
Cocurullo said the new conference and event centre would not compromise existing Whangārei conference facilities, as these all had their own constraints.
