Best-case scenario: New Napier pool complex at least four years away

The Napier Aquatic Centre at Onekawa Park. Photo / NZME

A new aquatic centre for Napier is four to five years away, even in the best-case scenario, says Mayor Kirsten Wise.

The topic resurfaced at an extraordinary meeting of the Napier City Council's Sustainable Napier Committee last Thursday, when councillors endorsed the inclusion of an additional $8,626,435 of capital funding (loan-funded) in the annual plan to support the ageing facilities in suburban Onekawa, pending the building of new facilities.

Wise told Hawke's Bay Today the current facilities are "very well used" and she wouldn't be advocating closure without replacement facilities in place.

It wasn't all plain sailing, with her move seeking the decision for health and safety and service continuity capital improvements, and an additional $80,000 of operational expenditure per year of "the remaining life" of the asset to enable repair and maintenance of end of life components (funded from exiting budgets), passed by an 8-3 vote.

It was opposed by council veteran Tania Wright (Taradale Ward) and first-term councillors Nigel Simpson (also Taradale) and Hayley Browne (Ahuriri).

The cost would lead to a 1.7 per cent rates increase over two years.

A new aquatic centre for Napier is four to five years away even in the best case scenario, says Mayor Kirsten Wise.

But with councillors having received the voluminous reports just three days earlier, crucial issues, including a preferred site – either in the vicinity of the current aquatic centre at Onekawa Park or at a site off Prebensen and Tamatea drives - are yet to be answered.

Having lobbed an array of questions at staff, councillors will "workshop" the detail in private this week. Issues will be "double-debated" at the next Council meeting on March 10, in the hope that the Council will be able to then start preparing the pathway for public consultation.

The timeline has impediments, including that it's a local government election year, with limitations on the council's ability to make significant decisions in the preceding months.

Issues she believes need further exploration include what impact, if any, there could be from the new high-performance centre pool at Mitre 10 Park, Hastings, and the council's own return to management of the city-owned Marine Parade facility Ocean Spa, on which a lease expires at the end of this year.