Trails funding to help build two new shelters

MOTU SHELTER: A Motu Trails shelter and pou on the summit of Papamoa Hill on the Motu Road . . . This is the shelter style of Motu Trails and Motu Charitable Trust plans to build two new shelters on the trail with new funding. Picture supplied

The Motu Charitable Trails Trust has had another financial boost from central government.

The trust has been given $28,573 as part of a recent $770,000 investment into the Great Rides of the New Zealand Cycle Trail.

It was the ninth round of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s Maintaining the Quality of Great Rides Fund (MGR Fund).

The key projects the Motu trust will be embarking on are two shelters. One will be on the Dunes Trail and the other towards the Motu end of the Motu Road.

This MGR Fund is for co-funding. That is, a Great Ride puts in say $10,000 of local funding and that money is matched by The New Zealand Cycle Trail (NZCT) with $10,000. There’s also the option of putting in local volunteer time to gain NZCT funding, and Motu Charitable Trust’s Jim Robinson said they would again do this as well.

The funding put in by the trust for these shelters will come out of the “extraordinarily generous” donation made earlier this year by Garth Barfoot.

“It’s hugely pleasing that we’ll be able to double the value of Garth’s funding we’re using this time around, for the long-term benefit of all trail users.”

In the past 18 months, MGR Fund rounds have seen Motu Trails gain money to construct a giant sign and a five metre-long picnic table at the end of the Pakihi Track (local input for that was almost all volunteer time), and track enhancement work on the Dunes Trail.

Total project costs for round nine applications was approximately $1.4 million, of which the Maintaining the Quality of Great Rides Fund contributed $770,000.In February 2014, $8 million over four years was announced for the Maintaining the Quality of Great Rides Fund. A total of $7.8 million has been approved for 94 projects across 20 Great Rides so far.