Christchurch rejected govt offers on stadium

Thursday’s council meeting on the stadium’s future presents the opportunity to turn the page on a decade of delay. The bill has blown out, the completion date has been repeatedly reset and at times the Christchurch City Council simply hasn’t exhibited the self-belief, drive and resolve to see this major infrastructure project through to fruition.

The Lianne Dalziel-led council has racked up a world of excuses to repeatedly kick this gigantic can down the road, undermining commitments made, shattering public confidence, and supersizing the capital costs of this delay-plagued anchor project.

In addition to putting the stadium on the backburner in the 2015 Long Term Plan, for the best part of a decade, it has also transpired that the Dalziel-led council repeatedly spurned offers by the Crown to lead the build and delivery of this major anchor project.

Gerry Brownlee and Megan Woods, in their respective capacities as former Earthquake Recovery Ministers, have both just confirmed to me that multiple offers, overtures and approaches were made to the mayor and senior council leadership to hand over the project for the Crown to take charge of, but those offers were rejected outright, particularly in 2017 and 2019.

None of those offers ever made it to the council table, in the form of a staff report, for elected representatives to duly consider.

Early on in her mayoralty, Dalziel never hid her disdain for the government leading so many aspects of Christchurch’s post-earthquake recovery, repeatedly exhorting Wellington to hand back control to the council.

Finally, they did.

But did Dalziel’s parochial streak of selfdetermination blind her judgment?

Allowing O¯ ta¯ karo Ltd to take charge of the stadium project would have averted the selfinflicted pickle the council now finds itself in.

I will be forever grateful the council wasn’t entrusted to deliver Te Pae or the Metro Sports Centre. We’d still be waiting.

Yes, I’m a fiscal conservative, who has possibly bored you over the years banging on about the council’s profligate appetite for spending your money. Jumping from the initial $483 million to $683m today, the 41% increase in Te Kaha’s project cost is most unpalatable and regrettable. We are paying a heavy price for dither and delay.

I do note that the council’s financial illdiscipline and project creep on the Town Hall repair saw that budget blow out by 31%. Then there is the major cycleways project. Go back to 2013 and the council had estimated the overall project cost at $68.6m.

I actually wrote in support of rolling out this dedicated network at the time. Little did I know that the cycleway design template, now costing $3m per kilometre, would morph into the overengineered, obstructionist and road-narrowing minefield that has since festered. In the process, the cycleways project cost has exploded by 340%, to $301m.

But for all the folly with the public purse, the elected council faces a very simple decision on Thursday, particularly if the stadium’s independent board fronts up with a fixed-price contact, underpinned with a handsome contingency.

There are a multitude of ways city ratepayers can be spared bearing the brunt of the cost increase burden ...

T here are a multitude of ways city ratepayers can be spared bearing the brunt of the cost increase burden, as has been widely traversed, from regional rates contributions and real estate divestment to reworking the council’s $5.7 billion, 10-year capital budget.

Councillors have a duty to bring the decade of lost opportunities to an end and finally endorse the delivery of this grossly mishandled anchor project. Depriving Christchurch of a fit-for-purpose prime time sports, events and entertainment arena is condemning New Zealand’s second-largest city to the unambitious ranks of a second-rate city – with a gaping vitality deficit.

By any measure, the stonking submissions turnout provides a clear mandate to get on with it. It’s courted 30 times more submissions than those on granting funding to Christ Church Cathedral and 61 times the number of submissions on this year’s Annual Plan.

In fact, 30,500 equates to nearly a third of all residents who bothered to vote during the last council elections. Commanding 77% support to proceed, the resounding will of the people has cleaned the clock of those wishing to pause or scrap this project. Hear the people roar, I signalled, when submissions first opened. And roar they did.