Ten days to decide or it’s coming down
A property investor has 10 days to decide if he is still interested in taking a property, earmarked for demolition, off the Invercargill City Council’s hands.
Council property manager Paul Horner put a report to councillors on Tuesday, recommending that a $1.4 million budget be approved to carry out demolition on the council-owned property at 66 Dee St, Invercargill.
The building has been issued with an Insanitary Building notice, which requires the demolition or repair of the building.
Before the meeting, Nelsonbased property investor Gaire Thompson contacted council chief executive Claire Hadley to highlight his interest in potentially taking the building off the council’s hands.
The council identified that repairing the building could not be practically or economically achieved and the building had no worthwhile future use.
Horner’s report says the logical conclusion is to demolish it.
However, Thompson’s interest centres on repairing the building and finding another tenant.
Thompson himself has not yet seen the state of the building but he had a representative look through the building this week and was provided with photos.
The plan was to visit himself and at the same time get an engineer to look through the building.
Thompson said his interest was still genuine.
Councillors decided at Tuesday’s meeting to provide Hadley with a 10-day time frame to work with any interested parties.
If those talks did not lead to anything the plan to demolish the building would get the go-ahead.
A tenderer has already been awarded at the sum of $714,642.