Common sense must prevail on future of Theatre Royal

Saturday, 27 July 2024

Nigel Gilkison is a Timaru-based architectural and urban designer and chairs the Timaru Civic Trust.

OPINION: The debacle of last week’s Timaru District Council decision to scuttle the Theatre Royal and Heritage Hub project was probably, on balance, the correct one – given the concerns over the proposed $57 million budget.

But instead of swallowing their pride and electing to go back to fix the original problem, councillors instead voted to embark on a completely new journey into the unknown.

From what started as a necessary solution to fix the well-known problems with the Theatre Royal’s backstage area and fly system, back in 2015, the project slowly spiralled into a costly overrun of uncontrolled proportions.

In early 2017, the work was originally projected to cost just $4.5m, with an option to also include new seating and dressing rooms, taking the projected budget up to $7m and an estimated completion time of 23 months.

Then began the gradual decline into chaos. By 2018, the budget for the backstage improvements had nearly doubled to $8.7m, with the optional extras taking the expected cost up to $11m to $12m.

From here things really started to snowball. This was where the bright idea to incorporate the South Canterbury Museum into the facility was introduced and the cost doubled again, adding a further $12m to the budget.

The Theatre Royal closed in November 2019 in preparation for what had now become a major redevelopment.

Then came Covid, which inadvertently provided an unforeseen windfall for the council, in the form of an $11.6m cash injection from the Government towards the cost of this apparently “shovel ready” project.

This is where things really started to ramp up. The architects were dumped and a Christchurch-based construction firm was locked in to “design and build” the thing.

From here the project costs increased exponentially, eventually settling at the eye-watering figure of $57m, which was confirmed at last week’s “extraordinary” council meeting. Extraordinary indeed!

But wait – it gets worse! Instead of agreeing to proceed with a project that had been heavily consulted on and previously agreed, the council decided to change tack and set sail for a completely new destination.

Where on earth did this new idea come from? It hasn’t been the subject of any council public consultation.

First to publicise its displeasure over the increased costs for the Theatre Royal and Heritage Hub was Conscious South Canterbury, with the group’s paid advertorials trumpeting its own misinformed rhetoric.

Who even are the members of Conscious South Canterbury? Have they ever disclosed who the people are behind the opinion? For a group that claims to be so concerned about the cost of the Theatre Royal and Heritage Hub project, why did they not make a submission to the council’s recent Long-term Plan process?

Perhaps they have lost consciousness? If they are not prepared to publicly front up and debate their ideas, then we can only assume this was a deliberate attempt to scuttle the project, in a cowardly act of public manipulation, motivated purely by commercial self-interest.

Then there was the South Canterbury Chamber of Commerce, which suggested, at the eleventh hour, that it was “100% confident” a new building could be built on a “greenfield” site for about one-third of the cost of the current project. A suggestion that never actually materialised.

For clarity, the definition of a greenfield site is one that has never been built on before. So where is this new theatre going to go? Washdyke? Waimate? If it is all about saving construction costs, maybe we should build our new theatre in Iraq, where I hear construction costs are much less than they are in New Zealand.

Facetious, I know, but the point is that a public facility like a theatre houses a civic activity that needs to be situated close to other complementary uses (restaurants, bars and so on) in a central location where other civic activities are happening. It will not work on an out-of-town greenfield site.

These last-minute suggestions for a new-build, multi-use cultural facility on a greenfield site are simply undeveloped, untested and uncosted preliminary concepts. To stop and turn the ship around at this very late stage will only result in further delay and more waste of ratepayers’ money.

I suspect these latecomers, like Conscious South Canterbury, are motivated more by commercial self-interest than a real desire to produce a better outcome for the people of the Timaru District.

So now we are right back where we began, with a whole lot of our money, and time, having been completely wasted (perhaps $20m?).

And we are now being led off on another senseless voyage into the unknown. This has to stop. Common sense has to prevail. Go back and focus on the original problem, and fix it.

The only sensible option for councillors last Tuesday was to revert to the original plan of fixing up the Theatre Royal. If they had stuck to this original plan in the first place, we would already have our beautiful theatre restored and generating revenue, and, thanks to Jacinda Ardern, it probably wouldn’t have cost us a penny.

Council and the councillors must be held accountable for the shambolic handling of this project and we, as a community, cannot afford to let history repeat itself all over again.

They have to realise it is our money they are spending and that they must do so in an open, sensible and cost-effective manner. Otherwise we run aground and we’ll all end up going down with the ship.