JOHN BISSET/Stuff
Timaru District Mayor Nigel Bowen is encouraging people to give feedback on a major planned spend on the CBD.
A $30 million spend up on central Timaru is on the district council s wish list for the next 10 years. Landscaping, improved paving tiles and further enhancement of Caroline Bay are some of the suggestions floated for the $30m that is in the council s draft Long Term Plan that is headed for public consultation in April. The council has dubbed the $30m strategy “CityHub” with a vision to regenerate the town centre. Timaru District Mayor Nigel Bowen told
Stuff the funding could go towards a variety of projects, but the aim was to have “the first major overhaul of the CBD in nearly 25 years”.
Artist impressions of how the Countdown Supermarket at the new Showgrounds Hill development will look.
The threat of a Judicial Review against Timaru s major retail development at Showgrounds Hill has been by dropped by a Timaru ratepayers’ action group. The Timaru Town Centre Ratepayers’ Action Group (TCRAG) had, in late 2020, said it would seek a review in the High Court of Timaru District Council’s independent planning commissioner Allan Cubitt s decision to grant consents for the 34,000sqm retail centre without publicly notifying them. However, the group s withdrawal and its ongoing concerns are confirmed in a letter dated January 28 to the developer s (Redwood Group) lawyers.
As it has been classed by the district council as a priority building, the deadline to completeseismic work is 2033. Blakemore said while she was not surprised by the initial assessment result, she was now in limbo as to what to do next. “Based on early assesments the costs for the work will be in the hundreds of thousands and possibly in the millions, but I hope that by the time I get to actually doing further assesments, the technology for strengthening would make it cheaper. “The costs of strengthening are prohibitive, and there re all sorts of practicalities I have to go through,” she said.
Artist impressions of how the Countdown Supermarket at the new Showgrounds Hill development will look.
The go-ahead for a retail development for Showgrounds Hill, the SC RSA building s demolition, and the return of a beloved cat missing for two years, all made the headlines in December, as Doug Sail discovered in the final instalment of our series looking back at the year that was. The controversial Timaru retail development proposal at Showgrounds Hill was granted resource consent on December 11, less than a day after a ruling that the application was not headed for public consultation. Permission for Auckland-based developer Redwood Group (RG) to turn the 12-hectare site site into a 34,000 square-metre retail centre was approved by independent commissioner Allan Cubitt.
Mytchall Bransgrove/Stuff
Government funding of $11.6m was awarded to the Timaru District Council s Theatre Royal upgrade and Heritage precinct project. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, was in Timaru to confirm the Government support for the $23m project which ‘met the criteria of the Government’s ‘shovel-ready’ programme, in that it was ready to proceed and would create jobs. ‘‘The design and construction of the theatre upgrade and new (museum) facility is estimated to directly employ 155-210 people.’’ A planned $7.5m redevelopment of Alpine Energy Stadium received the biggest handout from the Timaru District Council’s stimulus fund. The Fraser Park Community Trust, which runs the facility, received $900,000 of the $1.85m available as the council culled 20 funding applications back to 10 successful projects.