Stadium

23 December 2008

PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL

24 December 2008

Hon Bill English MP for Clutha/Southland Minister of Finance, Minister for Infrastructure Deputy Prime Minister Deputy Leader Parliament Buildings Molesworth Street Wellington 6160

Dear Mr English

The Carisbrook Stadium Trust's push to raise private funding for the Awatea St stadium had passed the $14 million mark, trust chairman Malcolm Farry said yesterday.

Visits to Invercargill and Queenstown to sell seating packages, and one-on-one meetings with people in Gore, had been "satisfactory", he said.

Dunedin's proposed Awatea St Stadium is a waste of money because most people watch sport on television, an Otago Regional Council panel was told in Alexandra yesterday.

The Carisbrook Stadium Trust has been promised $13 million from the sale of corporate suites and "lounge club memberships'', trust chairman Malcolm Farry said yesterday, the first indication of substantial private funding for the project.

The cost of changing land zoning at the Dunedin stadium site, which could include expensive legal fees, will not be a hidden cost to the Dunedin City Council, deputy mayor Syd Brown said.

There were brief interludes devoted to public toilets, liquor licensing and climate change, but the Awatea St stadium was the most popular - or perhaps unpopular - subject at a Dunedin City Council annual plan consultation meeting last night.

All land required for the Awatea St stadium has been signed up by the Carisbrook Stadium Trust, but settlement with one leaseholder remains to be achieved.

Carisbrook Stadium Trust chairman Malcolm Farry has defended his organisation against peer reviewers' suggestions it ‘‘excluded'' items necessary for the stadium, which would require funding, from its reports.

Two new companies could soon be added to the Dunedin City Council's group of trading organisations to own and market the planned Awatea St stadium.