Will the Sports Hub cost more than $50 Million ?

Will the Sports Hub cost more than $50 Million ?

It’s weird when you get involved in finding information about the Council, often over your morning coffee, and you’re looking for one thing, in this case a meeting date and time, and while looking for that, you discover a very tiny bit of information that is actually quite big.

This is one of those bits of information and a result of the Sports Hub project.

There has been a bit of discussion around the community – how can one building and a carpark cost $50 million ?

Through our Candidate events there has been a lot of discussion about many of the current councillors having a habit of gold plated spending – liking to pick THE most expensive option available for a project.

We wrote our original story about the Sports Hub in January 2025. The link to that is here:

https://www.npratepayers.nz/blog/2222855

It turned into three stories as we uncovered more information.

People may recall there was an issue of a race stand building, which had several paying tenants, but it needed a one-off cost of $300k to upgrade the building. $300k the Racing Company didn’t want to pay - and $300k the NPDC didn’t want to pay.

So a $50M budget was developed instead, for a building and a carpark, and removing the problem building with a $300k maintenance budget.

So THE little bit of info ? Found in an NPDC Work in Progress (WIP) list - in a council agenda for the Finance Audit and Risk Committee

Race Day Tie Ups $2.228 M

The Sports Hub is also on this list with $3.353M

So $5.5M is on this WIP list because of the removal of a race stand – which happened SO a Sports Hub building could go in.

What are race day tie ups ? See the attached search to explain this is to create an area to tie up the horses on race days – and to be fair - to clear the site too – but $2.228 M – to tie up the horses on race day.

And no one involved in this decision – the Racing Club – or the NPDC – wanted to spend $300k – once - to maintain a race stand building.

Gold Plated spending at the NPDC.

If you haven’t voted yet – please do not vote back in the people who like gold plated spending.

Like those who pushed so hard to continue with the Sports Hub – which originally was a big paddock full of all sorts of activities – but when that wasn’t possible - they threw all of the budget at one building and a carpark – PLUS another couple of Mil to create an area to tie up the horses on race day.

Afterall, what’s another couple of Mil among ratepayers ?