Advocates are ''over the moon'' that the Aramoana wharf restoration project has been approved, but now they will have to figure out how to raise its $100,000 price tag.
The Aramoana League, which has been campaigning for the restoration of the wharf for years, will take on responsibility for funding the project, secretary John Davis said.
''We're going to create a charitable trust [to] deal with the fundraising and management of the rebuild.''
The Dunedin City Council put the final stamp of approval on the wharf restoration in a 13-1 vote this Monday, with only Cr Lee Vandervis voting against it.
The plan was to use the existing structure in addition to new materials when possible, Mr Davis said.
The fundraising target was $100,000, but the project was ''hard to put a price [on]''.
''No contractor would be able to put a price on to it,'' he said, ''You don't do wharf restorations every day.''
The decision marks an about-face from a council staff suggestion almost three years ago that the wharf be ''removed as soon as practicable''.
The wharf, which was built in the early 1900s, had fallen into disrepair and had not had maintenance work done for more than two decades when the recommendation was made in 2012.
Ownership of the wharf was transferred to the council in 1989, but the council remained unaware of that fact until 2010.
Cr Andrew Noone said the initial recommendation to demolish the wharf arose from health and safety concerns that the wharf was a ''potential liability'', once the council had acknowledged its ownership.
Once the council realised the community's dedication to keeping the wharf, the tide changed, he said.
Then, in 2014, the council agreed to pay several thousand dollars for an archaeological assessment of the wharf, to determine whether it had ''any pre-1900 feature or structure ... on the site'', and thereby ''heritage value''.
The assessment found that it did not, meaning the plan to restore and rebuild the wharf could go forward.
In addition to approving the restoration of the wharf, Monday's council vote also makes the council liable for wharf maintenance once the work is complete.
The committee report noted that, once the wharf was restored, maintenance would be ''sourced from existing budgets on an ongoing basis''.
Mr Davis said he was ''very confident'' the charitable trust would manage to raise the funds necessary for the restoration, but that he was still ''worried about it''.
''The sad thing will be, if we can't raise the funds, it'll be back to the demolition phase,'' he said.
''We're going to give it our best shot.''
