Invercargill City Council agrees to $25m CBD spend

Tuesday, 13 August 2019

Artist impression of the HWCP Development of the Invercargill CBD inner city block, Tay, Dee, Esk and Kelvin streets. Pictured the mall entrance.

The Invercargill City Council has made arguably its most important decision in a generation by agreeing to invest up to $30 million in a city centre block development.

Councillors and Mayor Tim Shadbolt voted unanimously on Tuesday to invest $25m into stage one, two, and three of HWCP Management Ltd's planned development.

Lindsay Thomas abstained from voting given he is a director of HWCP Management Ltd.

A further $5m has been delegated to ICC chief executive Clare Hadley and Holdco chairperson Brian Wood for any design changes which might need to be negotiated.

**READ MORE:

HWCP director Scott O'Donnell is delighted Invercargill City Councillors have agreed to back the planned CBD block development.

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Another $20m ratepayer investment will be allocated for 'streetscape', which would have been set aside if the council was or was not an investor in the block development.

Speaking after the meeting, HWCP Management Ltd director Scott O'Donnell said he was delighted the councillors had shown the fortitude to back a project, which he believed would transform the heart of Invercargill.

Tuesday's decision was key to ensuring the development could move forward, he said.

'We are working with three public [entities], it's like a house of cards, we need them all on board,' he said.

To this point, O'Donnell, and fellow private investor Geoff Thompson, have spent three years working on the project and O'Donnell declared Tuesday's ICC decision as one of its big hurdles it needed to clear.

An end of August deadline had been set to get all of the funding together to proceed with the development, O'Donnell said.

The hope now was the other investors would be locked in within the next nine days.

That would then trigger the ability to put a demolition plan forward and get on with clearing the block.

O'Donnell said there were just two retail tenants signed at this stage, given most would not sign until the funding for the project had been confirmed.

Once that happened more tenants were expected to sign, he said.

While the council has only invested in stage one, two, and three of the project, O'Donnell said stage four (the HWR office building), stage five (medical centre/civic centre), and stage six (accommodation), were reliant on the first three stages being able to be completed.

Once the whole development was operational there was the potential for 'thousands of people' to be using that block at certain times of the day, he said.

During the meeting, Councillor Ian Pottinger said he supported the council's investment but he did raise a couple of points of concern.

It included suggesting that the council should use money from the sale of assets like forestry or land to fund the CBD project, instead of borrowing.

'A lot of companies do this. In fact, you do it in your own household, where sometimes you just stop burrowing, you sell something so you can buy something else.'

Pottinger also suggested any design changes that Hadley or Wood might need to be negotiated through the process should require the full approval of the council.

However, that suggestion was not shared by his fellow councillors.

'It's not our job to have our hands on the button all the way through,' councillor Ludlow said.

'If you are passing on the delegation for negotiations, you've got to give the room for the negotiations to take place and not keep expecting it to come back to council,' Ludlow added.

'In reply to that. Sorry, I don't authorise $5m of spending without at least knowing where it potentially would go. You may as chair of finance,' Pottinger said.

'That's an unfair slur,' Ludlow responded.

Councillor Karen Arnold spoke in support of Ludlow's comments.

'You either trust the people that you nominate or you don't. To start arguing that design changes need to come back to us, if the private parties are already frustrated, they are going to be really, really frustrated if we are going to be coming back every six weeks.'