Developer and former construction company manager Russell Lund has called the city council’s investment in the sporting facility poor value for money and says, if elected, he would call for the decision to be overturned and staff sent back to the drawing board.
However, the Dunedin City Council has stressed the funding is a placeholder while staff develop design options — the final decision would be made by the incoming council.
In May, councillors added $15.36m funding for a replacement roof into the Dunedin City Council’s planned capital expenditure programme for the next nine years after sports groups and facility users urged action.
They warned councillors’ inaction could lead to injury risks, reputational harm and the city continuing to miss out on hosting tournaments unless problems with leaks and condensation were fixed.
Mr Lund said everybody involved, including himself, wanted a watertight roof for the Edgar Centre.
However, he favoured reroofing the centre and using roof-mounted ventilators to extract moisture, an option which would cost about $2m, he said.
"There’s even sections of roof that can be reused, as I understand it, but large sections of it will be replaced."
Mr Lund said Christchurch’s Netball Centre, which opened in 2023, was a similar size to the Edgar Centre and built for $16.5m.
"They built the entire building for what these people are proposing to re-roof, so it does not pass any kind of smell test."
Council property services group manager Anna Nilsen said the council was not going to debate an election candidate’s views.
"But it’s important to clarify that councillors decided to put money in the budget as a placeholder to allow staff to begin work developing a range of potential design options," she said.
That work was not complete and decisions on the preferred option and associated costs, were yet to be made.
Options were expected to be presented to the council next year, and councillors would make the final decision on the preferred design, Ms Nilsen said.
The work would then be subject to a public tender process.
The council’s nine-year plan included $360,000 in 2025-26 for detailed design of the roof, then $3m for the project in 2026-27 and $12m in 2027-28.
