Realignment for stadium to cost $1.5m

Don Hill
Don Hill
The cost to ratepayers of realigning State Highway 88 to make way for the Awatea St stadium is expected to be $1.5 million, Dunedin City Council transportation planning manager Don Hill says.

The issue of the cost of the stadium realignment has regularly come up in letters to the editor in the Otago Daily Times, and was again broached in a debate on the stadium on Radio New Zealand National on Sunday.

The history of claims about the extra cost of the realignment to the stadium project includes those by University of Otago academic Dr Robert Hamlin that it would cost $50 million, and former council auditor Nicola Holman, who teaches public sector accounting at the university, estimating it would cost $5.89 million.

The debate on Sunday ended in something of a stalemate of competing claims between Stop the Stadium president Bev Butler and Carisbrook Stadium Trust chairman Malcolm Farry.

Asked for a definitive answer, Mr Hill said it was important to note the SH88 project had been included in the council's transportation strategy in July 2006, a year before the stadium project was announced.

It included a link over the rail corridor, connecting the existing route with the highway north of the Logan Point quarry.

When the stadium was proposed, it was necessary to realign what had been planned.

The change to the project would cost $4.5 million, Mr Hill said, as the road had to be longer, a bridge over the Leith would be longer, and more land had to be bought.

In June, the Regional Land Transport committee agreed to fund $17 million for the part of the project from St Andrew St to SH88, meaning 65% of the $4.5 million for the stadium realignment would be paid by the Government.

That was still to be finally signed off by the New Zealand Transport Agency, but Mr Hill said he did not expect any problems.

 

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