Basin Reserve a sticky wicket

By JAMES GARDINER

The Basin Reserve is becoming an increasingly costly financial drain on the Wellington City Council.

The capital city's home of test match cricket - also New Zealand's largest roundabout - survived this week after an appeal by the Wellington Regional Stadium Trust to the council for $180,000 to keep it going for another year.

The trust took over the running of the Basin four years ago, just before the new waterfront "Cake Tin" stadium opened, replacing Athletic Park for rugby and snaring the more lucrative one-day cricket.

Since then the council has had to pay more and more money to the trust, with the ground producing a shortfall of revenue over expenditure of around $400,000 a year.

And those losses look likely to increase.

The trust itself is in a financially parlous state, particularly after losing an expected $1 million in revenue after New Zealand was booted out as co-host of this year's Rugby World Cup.

Trust chief executive David Gray told the council that the trust's projected profits for the next three years would fall well short of the $2 million needed annually to meet its loan-repayment agreement with bankers.

The trust has used hundreds of thousands of dollars of ratepayers' money to improve facilities at the Basin after criticism during the England-New Zealand cricket test in 2001, but it has also dipped into its own pockets for more than $300,000.

Members of the council's economy and arts committee heard this week that the bills would continue to pile up.

A further $1.3 million would need to be spent on the ground over the next decade, most of it in the first six years.

But while councillors were unhappy at the prospect of a growing drain on their funds, they were told they had little option.

Since 1884 the ground has been vested with the council under a trust deed for the purposes of cricket and recreation.

"It's quite a complicated piece of turf," said council recreation projects manager Glenn McGovern.

Without an act of Parliament, it probably cannot be used for any other purpose or sold.

Mr Gray said there would be more talks with cricket officials about meeting the cost of the ground, which will be the venue for two tests this summer.