Christchurch’s Otākāro Orchard wants to be the ‘new Dux de Lux’

Monday, 2 December 2024

The Otakaro Orchard building beside the Avon river in the CBD of Christchurch. The charitable organisation behind the central city orchard, Food Resilience Network, is asking Christchurch City Council for another $350,000.

Christchurch’s Ōtākaro Orchard wants to be the new Dux de Lux, it just needs another $350,000.

The charitable organisation behind the central city orchard, Food Resilience Network, is asking Christchurch City Council for the money on loan to get the building finished and open a cafe and bar.

However, council staff have advised councillors not to support the request because an existing $150,000 loan to the network, approved in 2020, is in arrears, and is now considered “at-risk”.

But network chairperson Hayley Guglietta said the group needed the money to complete the work so it could make repayments using the proceeds from running the cafe and bar.

If it had the money, the cafe could open in eight to 10 weeks. Without it, the cafe would still open eventually, but the work would be piecemeal, Guglietta said.

“We’d do a little bit at a time.”

Guglietta, who is a 2024 Kiwibank Local Hero medallist, is upset at council staff for not supporting the network’s loan application, and said staff had missed the point of the project.

Food Resilience Network chairperson Hayley Guglietta helps build an internal wall at Otākāro Orchard using handmade bricks. She wants the council to support the network’s loan application.

“We’re not building it for ourselves. We’re doing it to deliver back to the community.”

The orchard, on Cambridge Tce next to the Avon River, emerged from the city's post- earthquake Share an Idea campaign and was the only community-led anchor project to come out of the rebuild.

“This is a community project that the people of Christchurch wanted,” Guglietta said.

The site provides a headquarters for the network’s ongoing work in the city on boosting food resilience, local produce growing, and sustainability.

The building will include a cafe, green grocer, information centre, demonstration kitchen, meeting room and composting toilets.

A “blue-green roof” was installed late last year. It is topped with grass and shrubs, planted to insulate the building and store water, while donated rooftop solar panels will provide underfloor heating and electricity for the building. There will also be an outdoor amphitheatre.

Speaking to councillors at a council meeting last week, Guglietta said: “The staff are saying to us ‘you’ve got us by the balls’, well the reality is you’ve got us by the balls.”

The council had first security over the building, which was worth about $3m, due to the $150,000 loan. This made it challenging for the organisation to seek funding from elsewhere, she said.

Development of Otākāro Orchard building on Cambridge Tce started in 2019.

Up until September the network had been making interest-only loan repayments of $750 per quarter using money raised from selling fruit and vegetables. However, in September, the council changed the repayments to include the principal as well, meaning payments went up to $8734 quarterly.

“We aren’t operational and we can’t pull it [the money] out of the air.”

Staff are proposing the council give the network $34,939 to cover the loan repayments for 12 months.

In a report, to be discussed at a council meeting on Wednesday, staff said there was limited evidence the cafe would make enough profit to repay a $500,000 loan.

“There is significant risk the loan will not be repaid.”

But Guglietta said the cafe and the green grocer would “absolutely” make enough money to repay the loan.

She said the figures they supplied to the council were conservative and did not include night trading. The numbers were based on inside tables only, not the outdoor ones as well.

“We want to be the new Dux de Lux.”

The Dux de Lux was a much-loved Christchurch bar, based at the Arts Centre for decades. It has been closed since the 2011 earthquakes and attempts to resurrect it have failed.

Guglietta said she would love the council to show its support for the orchard project by giving the network $350,000 from its capital endowment fund.

If the council did not grant the loan, she hoped it would remove the security on the building, so the network could seek support from other lenders.

About $1.7m has already been spent on the project, which included donations from Lotteries Commission, Rātā Foundation and the community.

The network has also received $200,000 from the council’s share of the former Government’s Three Waters “Better Off” funding.