Thank Whaka It’s Funding
The project to extend and renovate the community hall at Whakamārama has received a hugely significant grant of $175,000 from TECT.
The pledge makes it possible for the volunteer committee to try again for $380,000 of Lottery funding in August, after a previous application in February was declined.
The approval from TECT means a civil engineer can be engaged for the filing of a resource consent application for a septic tank design, which was one of the sticking points for Lottery funding. The other was that the Lottery grant assessors did not accept donated and discounted materials and approximately 600 hours of volunteer labour as being onethird of the value of the project.
“The TECT grant allows us to move forward and secure the rest of the funds required, which we need to do before the TECT grant is then fully released,” says chair Mike Carter.
“The project was priced at $562,000 in February. We have $12,000 of maintenance funds from District Council rates available in July, and we had $2,500 leftover from the previous round which allowed us to extend the old storage area and build the new deck. The TECT funding proves we have a third of the total project value accounted for,” he says.
Additional smaller applications for equipment such as a dishwasher and mobile stage may be made to Grassroots Trust, New Zealand Community Trust and The Lion Foundation later in the year. All three bodies are on hiatus as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
The next stage of the build will involve converting the storeroom area to a commercial-grade kitchen, building a new storeroom, and upgrading the toilet facilities including wheelchair access in place of the old kitchen to take advantage of existing plumbing.
Mike says the current toilet and kitchen facilities have reached the end of their lifespans and are in need of modernisation as part of the renovation.