Waip\u0101 ratepayers shelled out nearly $3 million on a failed Bunnings transformation project in Te Awamutu, Local Democracy Reporting can reveal.<\/p>\n
After paying $2.05 million to acquire the lease to the former Bunnings Warehouse site in 2021, Waipa District Council spent an additional $721,528 as of July 21, according to finance and commercial director Matt Walker.<\/p>\n
“This includes costs and expenses relating to ground rent, insurance, outgoings, repairs\/maintenance and fees associated with sub-leasing the property,” Walker said.<\/p>\n
A portion of the costs were offset, with $538,670 gained from rental income in the same period.<\/p>\n
The saga has garnered strong commentary from ratepayers and prominent figures alike after plans to transform the site into Te Ara Wai district museum’s new home were canned.<\/p>\n
The issue was reignited when mayor Mike Pettit defended council’s decision to simply go for the highest bidder.<\/p>\n
“If it’s something commercial that really is not the best fit for the CBD [and] there’s something that is a much better fit for the community of Te Awamutu… then I’d be hoping councillors would look at the social benefit,” he said.<\/p>\n
Taxpayer Union’s Tory Relf told the Waikato Times that council should “stick to the basics” and do its job.<\/p>\n
“Council’s job is to secure the best deal for ratepayers, not mark competing bids against a subjective wishlist.<\/p>\n
“These subjective criteria risk ratepayers taking a financial hit so councillors can pursue priorities that have nothing to do with selling the property.”<\/p>\n
Te Awamutu locals have also chimed in about the site, with some wanting a high-performance sports centre to support “gun young athletes” and others yearning for Bunnings to return.<\/p>\n
Local Jenny Smith questioned whether ratepayers would get anything out of the sale, since they contributed to purchasing the site.<\/p>\n
“Are we going to get some of that back? Or will it just go back into council’s pot of money, and then what?”<\/p>\n
The land is owned by Parish of St John Te Awamutu Trust, with the open tender process now underway.<\/p>\n
LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Waip\u0101 ratepayers shelled out nearly $3 million on a failed Bunnings transformation project in Te Awamutu, Local Democracy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-542335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542335","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=542335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}