Under its new earthquake-prone building policy, the Dunedin City Council has sent letters to owners requiring the strength of all pre-1976 buildings in the city be assessed within two years.
If buildings were below strength, owners would be given a time frame of between 15 and 30 years to have the buildings brought up to a required standard.
While groups contacted this week agreed buildings where people gathered needed to be safe, they said any strengthening work would add to the financial pressure they were already experiencing with increased insurance costs since the Canterbury earthquakes.
Individual groups paid their own rates and insurance on halls, so would have to pay for assessments and strengthening, if needed.
However, Scout groups were already struggling to pay insurance, and even an assessment cost would be a stretch, he said.
Forbury Park Trotting Club acting general manager Zelda Jordan said engineers were already assessing its buildings, some of which were nearly 100 years old.
When it knew what work was required, the club would assess the situation, she said.
Mayfair Theatre manager Bruce Collier said the 98-year-old building had already been assessed as earthquake prone.
While the theatre's board believed there were no immediate safety issues, and expected it would probably have about 15 years to bring the building up to code, it wanted to do the work as soon as possible.
Having just paid the building off, the theatre's board did not want to go into debt.
Failure to find alternative funding would ultimately mean the theatre would have to close, "but that would be a last resort", Mr Collier said.
Churches could also be facing crippling costs to strengthen buildings.
The Anglican Diocese of Dunedin and the Presbyterian Synod of Otago and Southland both said the cost of strengthening buildings, on top of increased insurance and other factors, would force change on churches.
After some of its buildings were assessed as requiring major costs to bring those up to code, the Anglican Church recently said it would restructure to remain sustainable.
Caversham Presbyterian Church has already identified a cost of $500,000 to strengthen the church in Thorn St.
Presbyterian Synod executive officer Fergus Syme said a letter would be sent to its 73 parishes requiring they undertake assessments as soon as possible.
If it was found strengthening costs would be beyond the means of the congregation, the parish would have to decide whether to sell the building or find other solutions, he said.
Community Trust of Otago chief executive Keith Ellwood said as assessments were completed, the trust expected an increase in requests for financial assistance for earthquake strengthening.
However, as the scale of the problem was likely to be "very big", he warned the trust did not have the capacity to help all.
The historical significance of a building and the outcome of what a building's end use would be after upgrading were factors that would be considered, he said.
