With the Central Library, Te Manawa, and Council’s offices all needing seismic upgrades, there is an opportunity for us to seek co-funding, and make these facilities even better than they are now!
The seismic upgrades detailed above will cost significant sums – but some also have the opportunity to transform our city centre. If you’ve been to Christchurch recently, you’ll have seen the impact of this with its new Library and Conference Centre. Tauranga, Invercargill, Hamilton, and many other cities are doing the same with these facilities – with diggers already on site.
Over the past few years we've been looking at what this could look like in Palmy, too. We've previously referred to this work as the 'civic and cultural precinct'.
Rather than just seismic strengthening, how do we draw more people and businesses into our city centre through these iconic cultural institutions? How do we get more people living in our city centre? How could the work on these facilities tell our history, support local businesses, better connect our residents and make our city centre more vibrant?
We’ve set up a steering group made up of elected members and representatives from business, iwi, tourism, and Te Manawa to plot the path forward for us. We’ve heard from some of these other cities too. They’ve explained their process and how they’ve attracted co-funding to ensure ratepayers aren’t the only ones footing the bill.
Tauranga for example has its ratepayers only paying half the cost of the works, with the rest coming from a mix of other funds.
Co-funding can work in various ways. It could be that we lease a building, we could have public private partnerships, or we could receive external grants from government or other funding bodies.
We haven’t done the groundwork yet to know what is possible in our city – but based on work in other cities we know these are valid options to consider. Both for better outcomes for our community, and financial reasons.
Our preferred option is to spend the next 3 years building on our existing planning and getting expert advice about the programme of work and funding, then consulting you again before proceeding
In the coming 3 years, we would be getting seismic design work started for the Regent Theatre and the Central Library. Construction will need to start on The Regent in that time too.
We are proposing to spend $100,000 in Year 1, $102,000 in Year 2 and $104,000 in Year 3 on investigating partnerships and funding opportunities and scoping out the potential for these facilities. There are additional costs involved in the design and construction of these projects.
As we've explained above, the costs for seismic upgrades and a rebuild of a facility are expected to be similar due to the nature of these facilities and their locations. This detail will be worked on over the coming year.
We've assumed 90% co-funding for the construction of these projects. That means for the estimated $132M for the library and Te Manawa, we would fund $14M. If we cannot seek external funding, we will need to look at alternative options, scope, and other Council projects to ensure we can do the legally required changes.
We will use our 2019 Civic and Cultural Precinct Masterplan as a starting point for this work.
Read the masterplan(PDF, 12MB)