Arts Centre fights council over food truck plan
Thursday, 19 September 2024
Christchurch’s Arts Centre has got into another spat with the city council over its plan to establish a food truck hub as it tries to boost revenue and visitor numbers.
The Arts Centre Trust recently applied to the city council for resource consent to increase the maximum number of food trucks on its site to 33. They would operate for up to 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
However it has had to agree to fewer trucks, and is fighting an $18,000 bill the council intends to send to compensate for added stress on the transport network.
Arts Centre director Philip Aldridge said after trialling food trucks, and receiving demand from operators, they see the plan as a good way to boost rental income and attract more visitors to patronise the centre’s existing tenants.
“We’ve lost over $1m per annum in council funding and need to earn every cent we can from the centre,” he said.
After receiving the consent application, the council wanted to limit the number of food trucks that can park at the Arts Centre to 25.
Aldridge said they have agreed to the reduced number, and are still “working with council to agree a few conditions” as the consent application is processed.
The trucks would sit around the old boys high building, the gymnasium, the engineering block, the common room and cloisters buildings, and market square.
The council has also informed the Arts Centre it will levy it $18,000 as a development contribution for the trucks.
The council charges one-off development contributions to property developers when residential or commercial premises are established, based on the area they occupy.
Mark Stevenson, the council’s head of planning and consents, said the levy is charged “on developments that place additional demand on council infrastructure”.
'In this instance, the resource consent application for food trucks at the Arts Centre has been assessed as placing additional demand on the council’s transport network.“
Adridge described the council bill as a hurdle it needs to clear.
“We will be appealing that calculation and hope that council can see how it is unnecessarily restricted.”
In its resource consent application, the trust says adding more trucks with longer hours would “contribute positively to the sense of place, giving visitors another reason to stay and spend time at this important heritage site rather than just passing through”.
“It makes sense to add more food trucks if we can,” Aldridge said.
“We are regularly approached by food truck operators so we’re confident that there will be sufficient interest to fill most of the proposed spots. If successful, it will be a good revenue stream for us.”
It notes that the centre’s “recent financial difficulties have been well publicised”. It has more than 70 organisations on site and remains an incubator of businesses in the central business district, the application says.
This year the trust, which runs the heritage complex on behalf of the public of Christchurch, asked the city council for an annual grant of $1.8m in the face of high operational costs such as insurance.
Aldridge threatened to dissolve the trust and hand the complex back to the council if it did not get sufficient funding to pay its bills.
Instead, the council agreed to give it $750,000 a year for the next two financial years, $500,000 a year for the following eight years, and the $110,000 strengthening communities grant for the next two years.
Post-quake repair and restoration has been completed on 20 of the 22 heritage buildings. Two former engineering buildings on Worcester Blvd have been mothballed awaiting funds for the work, while the former student union/Dux de Lux building, which does not have heritage status, also remains damaged and off-limits.
The trucks would go away from busier spots such as the hotel, cafe, cinema and restaurant, and could be moved if needed to make way for other events, it says.