Lianne Dalziel: Yet to provide a business plan for the proposed stadium.
Even though the Christchurch City Council plans to spend half a billion dollars on a new sports stadium, it has yet to produce a business plan to demonstrate that the numbers stack up.

ON WEDNESDAY Canterbury Employers' Chamber of Commerce chief executive Leeann Watson told the Christchurch City Council that it had to show "bold, courageous leadership" over the vexed issue of the proposed sports stadium.

If the Christchurch City Council were indeed to show such boldness and courage it would have told the corporate interests clamouring at its door that, no, it wasn't going to sink a further $220 million into a sports stadium of dubious value and was going to spend the money where it was needed the most - in the local community whose interests it was supposed to represent. Perhaps, for example, it might make a start on the 180 new council flats that the city will need every year for the next decade, just to keep up with demand.

But this. of course, wasn't the kind of 'boldness and courage' that Watson was calling for. With the Lianne Dalziel -led council as much intertwined with local corporate and business interests as Bob Parker's council ever was, Dalziel and her merry band of councillors were never going to do anything other than throw a whole lot of money at an anchor project conceived under John Key's National-led government. Only Cr Yani Johanson displayed the 'bold, courageous leadership' required and voted against funding for the proposed sports stadium.

Johanson told the council meeting on Thursday that it was disappointing that there had been no public consultation over how the money would be spent and he wanted the council to consult the community before making a decision.

Johanson is correct in his observation that the good people of Christchurch have, once again, been excluded from the decision making process -  but it is par for the course with this bureaucratic and top-down rebuild. In truth the decision to allocate $220 million to the sports stadium was sealed when it got the green light from Megan Woods, the Minister of Christchurch Regeneration and when Lianne Dalziel chimed in that it was a 'high priority' for her council and when Canterbury Crusaders coach Scott Robertson complained that he was fed up with sitting in the rain at  the AMI Stadium.

Indeed Hospitality NZ Canterbury branch president Peter Morrison, representing hotel, bar and restaurant owners, declared that no such public consultation was necessary. He told the council meeting that "We vote you people in to make decisions. We need this arena to go ahead." Apparently Morrison has a direct line to the good people of Christchurch and he knows what we are all thinking. Apparently we all agree with him that we need a new stadium.

Despite the fact the Christchurch City Council is going to sink close to half a billion dollars into the stadium it has yet to produce a business plan. This is despite Dalziel saying that “Labour has indicated this will require a business case. You’d have to show that the cost-benefit really stacks up.”

Yani Johanson: Disappointed there was no public consultation.
In fact we don't know if the numbers do stack up. The decision has been driven by a lot of  emotive hot air like  "the council had a duty to support and honour those people who have gone out on a limb and invested in our city". (Cr Pauline Cotter), and "It's an arms race and we are losing and we can't afford not to have a stadium." (property developer Richard Peebles).

The closest anyone on the Christchurch City Council came to submitting a 'business plan' was Deputy Mayor Andrew Turner. He told the council meeting the facility needed to be more than a rugby stadium, and should be designed to be used 365 days a year. Good luck with that idea. This kind of half-baked speculation from Turner should not convince anyone that he should be our next mayor if Dalziel steps down.

The only contribution that Mayor Dalziel had to make on the business plan front  was that there had been a lot of debate internationally on the financial benefits of stadiums, but she had not been able to find an example of one that was right in the heart of a central city, like Christchurch's would be. Dalziel had to say this because, internationally, a mountain of independent research shows that building a sports stadium does little for a city's economy. They generate few jobs and little growth. In most cases, the money could of been more wisely spent on badly needed public infrastructure, such as roads, housing or community services.

As it is with the proposed Christchurch sports stadium, they might be sold as investments in the local economy but they are really about appeasing corporate interests combined with a nod to misplaced civic pride.

The only real piece of work on the proposed stadium has been done by the Christchurch Stadium Trust who in August 2017 issued a pre-feasibility study. It states that the income generated from a new stadium will not cover debt repayments. So while Christchurch business interests like the Canterbury Rugby Union, the New Zealand Rugby Football Union and various hotel and bar owners might think they will reap the financial rewards from the stadium  it is likely to be yet another anchor project that will weigh heavily on the good people of Christchurch for many years to come. Any profits will be privatised and the costs will be socialised.

Sam Richardson, a senior lecturer with the Massey Business School comments: "If the facility doesn't cover its costs, who will be called upon to ensure it can pay its bills? It is hard to see anyone other than local ratepayers having to shoulder the additional (and likely sizeable) burden...You can't help but feel the city will be paying for its new stadium for many years to come – if history and international evidence is anything to go by."

By 2028 Christchurch City Council rates are scheduled to have increased by 50 percent.












0 comments:

Post a Comment

Comments are moderated.