An artist's impression of Christchurch's planned stadium, Te Kaha. Photo / Supplied
As a decision looms on the next course of action for the polarising Christchurch stadium over budget blowouts, Crusaders chief executive Colin Mansbridge has implored councillors to take a long-term view in the face of daunting figures.
Inflation, supply chain issues and workforce shortages have seen the multi-use venue's price tag balloon to $683 million – an increase of $150 million from original projections.
Christchurch City Council has received 30,000 public submissions about the project – of which 77 per cent are in favour of meeting the extra costs, with 8 per cent supporting a pause and re-evaluate approach and 15 per cent wanting a complete halt to the stadium's construction.
But Mansbridge still has concerns short-sightedness could stymie common sense when it comes to a final decision, which will be made by council this Thursday after further analysis of public submissions.
"It's a multi-use arena that's going to be around for 100 years," Mansbridge says.
"People have looked at it as a 20- or 30-year project – it's actually got a 100-year life, this facility. We have to be careful about making one-year decisions for a 100-year project.
"The numbers could appear frightening when you first see them. But looking at current inflation, those numbers are not out of context in the environment we're currently living in."
The Crusaders have played out of the upgraded Rugby League Park (currently known as Orangetheory Stadium) since 2012, meaning the ground has been the franchise's home for only four seasons less than the defunct spiritual stronghold Lancaster Park was.
The Addington venue will always hold an esteemed place in the Crusaders' history, but romanticism has worn thin for the club and its hardy supporters, according to Mansbridge.
"All the feedback we're getting is that (Orangetheory Stadium) is past its life and people are over it.
"You're close to the action, it's intimate – and it's remained a signal to the club and the fans and the region that we can keep going, we can get through this stuff. For that reason it is special," Mansbridge said.
"But when I walk into other venues and their dressing sheds, I'm always overawed by the size and scale and modernity. Then I walk into our temporary changing facilities and I see our spectators squashed in... I think what resilience they've shown to stick this out and keep supporting in the numbers that they do – so in that sense it is a special venue to us. But it's special like an old caravan.
"Any new permanent home would be game-changing for us, both for the fans and for the club. The club would benefit from having somewhere to call home that's not temporary.
"It's like at the moment we're in a caravan, but we want to live in a house."
While the reigning Super Rugby champs would be the new venue's highest-profile tenants, Mansbridge bristles at the tendency for stadium debate to gravitate towards being a Crusaders-focused issue.
Remedying Christchurch's status as a second-tier international rugby venue would also be a key upshot of a new stadium. The comparatively low-profile New Zealand-Argentina fixture in August will be the city's first All Blacks test in almost six years. In the interim, Auckland will have hosted 12 tests, Wellington six, Dunedin four and Hamilton two.
Meanwhile, as Forsyth Barr Stadium in Dunedin (population 126,000) prepares to add the Red Hot Chili Peppers to its bulging catalogue of recent visiting overseas acts in January, Christchurch (population 369,000) has been starved of large-scale concerts since Bruce Springsteen's early-2017 show at Orangetheory Stadium (then AMI Stadium).
A sprinkling of NRL and A-League matches have been staged at the Crusaders' current home, but a centrally located, state-of-the-art covered stadium would be a vastly more attractive proposition for other codes and clubs to relocate fixtures to.
"Some commentary is there's no such thing as a multi-use arena, some commentary is you've got to do one or the other – lots of supposed experts have discussed what they see as the right facility for the city," Mansbridge said.
"But this has been designed specifically as a multi-use arena – it's not Forsyth Barr Stadium with a roof on that you can throw other stuff in.
"Then there's Venues Ōtautahi, who are going to operate it and have been intimately involved with the design from the start. They're planning on over 200 events a year, of which 14 or 15 would be rugby.
"And the place needs it – Christchurch isn't whole without a venue like this. It's not right that we can't go to big concerts. Te Pae (Christchurch Convention Centre) is a great facility, but it's more for conferences for people from out of town. We haven't got somewhere to call home."
While Mansbridge understands the well-meaning motivation of those who want to take a beat and reassess the situation, he contends any further postponements could prove counterproductive and potentially just as costly – with a resultant mediocre, delayed product.
"We're a decade in and it's going to be 15 years before we've got a stadium on current timelines," he says.
"Pause and reassess sounds a lot to me like do what we've done for the last decade. I get that people think it's a priority thing, but I'm not sure they truly understand the accounting and finances around it.
Mooted redesign options to cut costs include reducing capacity, which could impact the venue's prospects of attracting bigger events, and removing the roof, which impacts its suitability as a multi-use facility.
Mansbridge, who worked primarily in the financial sector for more than 20 years before joining the Crusaders in 2018, strongly opposes both options.
"The danger of not carrying on with the current design is that we'll have to do a new design, spend years doing it and spend a similar amount of money to get back to a lesser design.
"We've already proven that inflation makes things look very expensive the longer you leave them. I think this price will look quite cheap in a decade's time and that's the issue we've got to keep in mind – especially with inflation running the way it is.
"We could save $100 to $150 million, maybe, on the current design. But you'd end up with a significantly inferior product to save a bit of money. It's like building a house and rather than putting a roof on now, putting a tarpaulin over the top and just hoping that's good enough and doing the rest when you can afford it."
Mansbridge reiterates the need for a big-picture, long-term outlook in a final impassioned plea to decision-makers before this week's council verdict.
"This is unique, it's being designed as a multi-use arena and I think it's worth reminding people of that.
"We could stop, we could redesign, reduce capacity, add a couple of years on – they're all legitimate ideas, but they should have been canvassed five or eight years ago.
"Pause or stop now feels very much like we'll never start, that's what worries me. The city is less rich for it. Those other 180-odd (non-rugby) events won't happen here, All Blacks tests won't happen here.
"For New Zealand's second-largest city, that's not right.
"My fear is it will never happen and my children will never have been to an event in Christchurch that's special to them."
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