Kohatu Park team revved up by progress

It could soon be pedal to the metal for the long-awaited Kohatu Park, near Tapawera.

Park board member Aaron Adcock said it was hoped a required upgrade of the intersection of Olivers Rd and Motueka Valley Highway would get under way this financial year. That would help build momentum for the plan to develop a regional motorsport and adventure park.

The board was scheduled to meet with Tasman District Council staff on site early this week to go over the design for the upgrade, which is a condition of the resource consent for the park.

Board members had also brought forward a planned meeting so they could divvy out tasks to ‘‘help with the momentum’’, Adcock said.

‘‘Everyone is very excited,’’ he said. ‘‘We’re looking forward to the next few weeks to dig in and get our tasks done. There’s a good buzz.’’

Once the upgrade was complete, motorsport clubs that ‘‘utilised the dirt’’ would be able to hold events.

‘‘We can potentially get some smaller events happening out there very soon,’’ Adcock said.

Concepts for the park include a 3.5km car racing track, a rally circuit, drag racing strip and karting track as well as a mountain biking park, a luge and zorb track, a campground and picnic area.

The possible home-stretch run towards an intersection upgrade is a 180-turn from how it looked at the start of a TDC engineering services committee meeting on Thursday.

A staff report for the meeting recommended the upgrade project be postponed until the 2018-19 financial year because of a hike in the estimated cost.

‘‘Further investigation and design work has shown that the cost of the project is likely to be around $696,000, over double the original approved budget [of $300,000],’’ the report says.

Adcock and fellow board member Ash Price spoke in the public forum section of the meeting, call- ing for a rethink of the recommendation. Price queried the new estimate for the work including a contingency of 30 per cent, ‘‘which is $144,000’’.

‘‘That to me, and I am an accountant, smacks of lack of knowledge and pure guesswork,’’ he said. Further work was needed and the ‘‘30 per cent should be maybe 10 per cent, which would cut $100,000 off the bill’’.

Price said he also believed the professional fees as a percentage ‘‘encourage an overestimation because they’re going to win’’.

Park board chairman Garry Adcock had a lot of experience in the civil contracting industry and had offered to set up as a recognised contractor for the council, Price said.

Other businesses had offered inkind work.

That support, along with a reassessment of the professional fee and a cutback of the contingency and ‘‘we could be looking at something not much more than about four-hundred-and-something-thousand dollars’’.

The board had also identified ‘‘substantial funding at no cost to TDC to get this off with ground’’ with assistance from Nelson Regional Development Agency chief executive Mark Rawson, ‘‘but that needs to see some actual work done by the council to provide reassurance to this company that there is solid local support’’.

‘‘This is vital for our project,’’ Price said of the intersection upgrade.

‘‘If this can get off the ground, it’s going to be a $25 million project that’s on the road and started at virtually no extra cost to the council beyond what it’s already committed to doing and there’ll be a huge benefit to the area.’’

Adcock told councillors the park and TDC needed to work together to get the intersection upgraded.

‘‘At the moment, it’s a sticking point to the clubs,’’ he said.

Later in the meeting, Cr Paul Hawkes said he supported the intersection upgrade project.

‘‘It needs to go ahead for the park to progress.’’

He moved a resolution that the council enter negotiations with the Kohatu trust and review the priority of intersection upgrade.

Cr Sue Brown seconded Hawkes’ motion and said the council had to be careful it didn’t add any unnecessary impediment.

The motion passed.