Facilities  |  13 Sep 2018

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The Christchurch City Council has reached agreement on how it wants money from the Government’s $300 million Capital Acceleration Fund to be spent.

The fund was set up by the Government earlier this year to help accelerate Christchurch’s regeneration.

At a meeting today, Christchurch Mayor Lianne Dalziel and Councillors considered a report and approved a plan to submit investment proposals to the Crown for:

• $220 million towards a multi-use arena/stadium.

• $40 million for roading and transport infrastructure.

• $40 million for residential red zone seed funding.

“The arena is the last piece in the jigsaw of the Government’s Blueprint, which investors have relied on to make significant investments in our city. This is about providing confidence,” Mayor Dalziel says.

“It is also important we address residents’ concerns about the condition of our roads. We want to use $25 million from the fund to fix roads in the five suburbs worst-affected areas by the quakes. We would like to use another $5 million to put a second coat of chip seal on some of the roads that were repaired as part of the SCIRT programme.

“We’ll also be putting a case forward to the Crown for $5 million for road safety improvement projects and $5 million so that we can accelerate a public transport priority project,” the Mayor says.

“The green spine will become an amazing asset for our city and we want to be able to help deliver the first stages of it because that will be essential to attracting and securing subsequent private investment.

“We want to use the remaining $40 million from the Capital Regeneration Acceleration Facility to help kick-start work on the green spine that is expected to be created along the Otākaro Avon River corridor in the former residential red zone. This will be added to what’s already in the budget in the Long Term Plan for a major cycleway through the river corridor.”

The Council will need to prepare a detailed investment case for each project it is seeking funding for before the Crown approves the funding.