Pack up your tent and dust off your air mattress, a new camping ground is coming to Southland.<\/p>\n
Construction is under way in Otautau, about 40 minutes from Invercargill, on a project which still holds some uncertainty around what it will include.<\/p>\n
So far, Southland District Council has confirmed the $425,000 project will have an amenities block with cooking and laundry facilities, plus showers.<\/p>\n
“There will be both powered and non-powered camp sites and it is hoped to include two non-self-contained cabins,” the council said.<\/p>\n
Initial work began on site before Christmas with completion scheduled for the end of April, it said.<\/p>\n
The cabins remain something of a mystery, however, as the council opted to discuss construction behind closed doors at a January meeting.<\/p>\n
Discussion about construction and an operating model was also handled in private at a Wallace Takitimu Community Board meeting in December.<\/p>\n
“The building and resource consents allow for cabins to be included but this has yet to be decided,” the council said.<\/p>\n
An overview of Otautau\u2019s camping ground history was provided by the council, which said the original version was built by the Otautau Jaycees group and opened in the 1960s or 1970s.<\/p>\n
A need for improved facilities was highlighted over the years and a project to upgrade the former campground was included in the council’s long-term\u00a0 plan for 2015 – 2025.<\/p>\n
That did not go ahead after the building was found to be structurally unsound, and was demolished in 2019.<\/p>\n
Funding for the new project was made up of $275,000 from Three Waters Better Off Funding received in 2023 by the community board, plus $150,000 from local reserves which was earmarked in the council’s 2024 – 2034 long-term plan.<\/p>\n
Tender information from 2024 shows a communal facility building of approximately 40 square metres was desired for the first stage, with cabins being a possibility in the second stage.<\/p>\n
The new camping ground will be located at the same place as its predecessor, Holt Park, and will be operated by the council.<\/p>\n
LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pack up your tent and dust off your air mattress, a new camping ground is coming to Southland.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-311272","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}