A late paper to tomorrow’s Central Otago District Council meeting recommends investigating other sites before a final decision is made.
At a fiery meeting in Roxburgh last week, most people wanted to rebuild on the site of the former entertainment centre, which housed an auditorium, cinema, town hall and kitchen.
The building was destroyed by fire in February.
The Scotland St site, which was owned by the council, was quickly cleared and remains vacant.
About $250,000, which will come from the insurance payout, has been spent on the site so far.
Central Otago District Council group manager community engagement David Scoones told the meeting the initial agreed insurance payout on the building was about $4.1million and would be paid before Christmas.
However, the sum insured was about $6m and he was confident a second quantity survey would persuade insurers to pay up to the full value, Mr Scoones said.
A project steering group, appointed by the previous Teviot Valley community board, was asked by some board members to investigate alternative sites.
The steering group agreed, and the community board recommended council approve that work, estimated to cost up to $40,000, from the payout and delay the rebuild by about five months.
At last month’s council meeting it was decided to leave any decision until after last week’s public meeting in Roxburgh.
Then, at that meeting those who attended voted 80-15 in favour of rebuilding on the original site over investigating alternatives.
Despite that, the staff report to tomorrow’s council meeting recommends investigating other sites
to assess if the old site was best for a "modern future-ready" facility.
Once investigations were completed, a report would be provided to the community board and council in March outlining the findings on alternative location options, to enable a decision on whether to change the project scope.
The report said investigating alternative sites would "respond to community feedback and ensure local voices were considered in decision-making".
If councillors decided instead to not approve investigating other sites’ advantages the project could go ahead without delay and the full insurance payout would be available for the rebuild, the report said.
