From your mayor : Investing in City Centre

Thanks to splendid financial management Christchurch is in the luxurious position of having to make up its mind about what to do with the over $500 million we will get from the sale of Orion’s North Island gas network.

Some of this money will have to be reinvested to ensure that our coffers get at least a $15 million dividend per year.

This money along with other dividends from our city-owned trading assets is why Christchurch can still boast of having the lowest level of rates of any major metropolitan area in New Zealand.

I expect and welcome a wide ranging public debate about what we should be doing with the rest of this windfall.

I too will join in this process of public debate at a later date with some of my other ideas about where we could best put some of this money. For the moment the investment preference at the front of my own personal queue is for us to allocate at least $20 million of this money to the revival of the central city.

We have a huge public consensus that we need to actively get involved in turning around the direction of the City Centre so it again becomes a vibrant area to do business. It is also apparent that the area can become an exciting and dynamic place to choose to both live and work.

Since we built on the cross-sector consensus about the heart of Christchurch last year and formed the central city board, the ideas and investment decisions have been coming in fast and furious.

To cite one example, an area quickly identified as having huge potential was to find and nurture an central city market. We trialled the demand for such a market earlier this year at the Arts Centre and found that the demand was even stronger than anticipated.

The challenge now is to assess the long term benefits of a permanent market location for the central city, produce growers and the public. Now we have been able to identify public demand, we will muster private sector support and participation to provide Christchurch with a great new asset. This is also a good example of how I would like to see the future developments in the City Centre take place.

All of them will ideally involve us in providing ideas and possibly some seed money to set up ventures in partnership with the private sector.

The central city board has now spent months developing their strategic plan. They have reached the conclusion that it is essential we now move on to setting up a commercially oriented development board with the funding to be able to broker positive growth in the central city.

I believe that they are right. We have a unique opportunity to invest directly in reviving the central city in a way that will provide us, and future generations, with a vibrant heart for Christchurch. Let’s take this chance and run with it.