Round two for marine precinct

Tauranga’s multi-million dollar marine precinct proposal is being given another life after it was rejected by the council this week.

The proposal to establish a business plan and test out regional council funding for the development on Mirrielees Road was brought out of confidential at Monday’s council meeting but failed on a vote.

However, Mayor Stuart Crosby and councillor Terry Molloy were absent during the vote, having left the meeting early due to other commitments.

Stuart says the issue will now be revisited when the minutes of Monday’s meeting are presented at a meeting in April.

 “My intention is to bring another paper back with some other options,” says Stuart.

“The elected members raised some very valid points about council’s role in the marine precinct from a funding capital point of view.”

Stuart says the option presented in Monday’s paper was just one of a number of possible funding options.

He is intending to present more options with more robust business cases around each option.

“I think that was a failure of the first report to be fair to elected embers,” says Stuart.

He says the issue is not one of tenure, as one potential investor was offered a 100 year lease.

“What is an issue on a lease proposal, is the ability to raise capital. If you don’t own the property that sometimes can be a problem. I don’t have a problem with the council selling part of the land, I would just like them too retain the waterfront portion.”

The main issue is funding the 300 tonne marine travel lift, which Stuart says costs a lot of money and does not generate revenue, but is required for the site.  

“I think that’s the barrier and how get the travel lift funded and that will trigger just about everything else, says Stuart.

“We don’t intend to get into building and things like that, but we need to work out how the travel lift and basic infrastructure can be funded.

“I’m still confident the elected members support the concept. What we need to do is consider further options for our involvement at all, and further progressing it.”