$193k spent on Chinese Garden so far
The part-completed Chinese Friendship Garden in Invercargill may still end up having a Chinese flavour to it despite city councillors putting a stop to the project this week.
A decision on the garden’s future is expected next year.
City councillors, in a split vote, put an immediate stop to the Queens Park project on Tuesday when a staff report said the cost to complete the garden would be $882,000 instead of the budgeted $600,000.
So far, $193,000 has been spent on the Chinese Garden, a council spokeswoman said. The project began more than two years ago as part of Invercargill’s sister city relationship with Suqian in China.
Suqian is building an Invercargill garden, which is nearly complete, and Invercargill has been building a Chinese garden, which has had issues.
Six months ago, then parks manager Robin Pagan told councillors the garden’s cultural corridor would not be included because it would have doubled the $600,000 budget.
When councillors were told this week an extra $282,000 was needed to complete the scaled back version, bringing the total to $882,000, they baulked and put a halt to the project. ‘‘Enough was enough,’’ deputy mayor Rebecca Amundsen said.
It was back to the drawing board for the garden, she said.
The council still had its original $600,000 budget and she believed some kind of Chinese garden should still be built on the site. ‘‘We should explore that as a first priority but if that’s untenable we need to look at what other options we have.’’
Cr Lindsay Thomas, the council’s works and infrastructure committee chairman, led the charge to halt the project because of the projected cost blowout.
It had been a ‘‘big call’’ for him to make because it was against a council staff recommendation, he said.
Thomas believed the council still had to do something on the site to acknowledge the Chinese, given Suqian had nearly completed its Invercargill garden.
A decision was likely to be made in the new year.