OPINION
Throughout the past four weeks, one thing has been at the forefront of nearly every conversation in Canterbury.
Not the weather, not who may or may not want to take over the mayoral chains, nor the merits of each; no, something else altogether.
What on Earth is going on with the stadium, and why do we need a stadium, anyway?
Stadiums are not commercially viable and that's a fact. All those feasibility studies, business cases, consultant report after consultant report, and the same conclusion is spat out each time: a bad-looking cost-benefit ratio. Just take a look at Forsyth Barr Stadium down the road in Dunedin – and you will see how that has played out.
Let's be generous and say our stadium will take another five years to be completed and ready to host the first rugby match and big international act. Let's round the cost of the stadium up to $700m and make an assumption that it might bring in $10m in revenue a year on the basis that it would have an at-capacity event each month (generous!) – and that $30 per ticket went right back to the council. By the time the stadium would break even – and taking into account whatever diabolical inflation rate we'll be dealing with by then, we'd be in the next century. By then we'd need to construct a new stadium, anyway, if stadiums are still a thing.
So why is there such a push by the business community to build it? Businesses understand the basic principle of a return on investment more than most. Why, with more than 30,000 submissions being made to the Christchurch City Council, and an overwhelming proportion of the public debate appearing to be in favour of the completion of the stadium, is there willful ignorance that stadiums are a big black hole?
The same argument could be made for our libraries. Our museums. Our public transport
systems. The buses and the trams. Our community pools. Our art galleries. Our roads.
Our well-trimmed-hedges and clean footpaths. Our cycleways. Our rubbish collection. Even our botanic gardens. But that argument isn't made, because we don't expect any of these things to return a profit; the things that provide enrichment, culture and are actually just basic services in the 21st century, that are expected when living in a large city. All of them make a loss, but all of them make a contribution to the overall quality of living in Christchurch.
The stadium is no different.
You might think – well, actually, it is different – because it's expensive and if we don't build it, then we're not missing out on anything. Well, we miss out on a stadium and all that it provides for the residents of Christchurch, Canterbury and the South Island. We miss out on the opportunity to host major international events, and it's not just rugby, it's every sport, and it's not just sport, it's music, it's culture and anything that could fit within the scope of a "multi-use arena".
We're a big city – the second largest in New Zealand, and for us to not be considered in the same stead as Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland as a viable destination in this corner of the world, we are doing ourselves a very big disservice. And if you don't want to use it, as a consumer, then don't. Much like you're not being forced to use a cycleway or go to the museum – but don't stop others from using it in the process.
We come back to the original point. Stadia don't pay for themselves (a big thanks to the Crown who are contributing $220m, which we will lose if we delay, or stop the construction), and they don't bring in a huge amount of revenue. If they did, there would be one in Invercargill and another in Taihape.
They do something far more important.
With every event, whether it's a rugby match or a Kapa Haka festival, it stimulates our economy in ways that aren't necessarily obvious to some – but it is obvious to taxi and transportation services, rental vehicle providers, the vibrant bars, restaurants, cafes, hoteliers and accommodation providers, caterers, retailers, security providers, lighting and music riggers, and all the other patron-based businesses and those who supply them from the local food and beverage manufacturers and producers, to the young people who are employed by this part of our business community.
The economic and social ripples across the business community cannot be understated and, unfortunately, they also cannot be accurately quantified. The best guess, from the council's own bean counters, is that with every major event there is an estimated visitor spend between $2m and $6m. How many major events are needed before that figure exceeds the contribution to construction costs from the Christchurch City Council? It won't take a century, that's for sure.
It's also not just about giving the regional economy a boost, having a stadium in our city is hugely beneficial to the cultural and social fabric of the city. With every event, it creates opportunities for the residents of our city to contribute through work and through the opportunity to attend. With every event, we also get visitors. They're good for filling the bars, they're good for diversity, and who knows – they might just like what they see, and decide to stay. They might even decide to invest in our city.
But wait, what about tidying up parts of the city that are residual from the quakes, first? What about improving existing infrastructure? What about constructing more cycleways and what about the smell? What about all of that? It's actually not about choosing one or the other, because it's possible to have all of the above, all at once, and as ratepayers we should be setting our expectations to do just that. The opportunity cost of not building the stadium is quite simple – we lose out on the economic benefits, we lose out on the cultural benefits, and we lose out on the social benefits, and we actually lose out on our chance to be up with the other big cities, and not just little old Christchurch, stuck at the bottom of the world known for its past as a city that had earthquakes or nice gardens.
Submissions on the stadium are overwhelmingly in favour of getting on and building it. The council has promised to make a decision on Thursday. We hope that the views of Cantabrians are taken on board – and we hope that given the volume of submissions, that the decision is not delayed further.
And when the decision is made, it needs to be made with the above in mind. In the best interests of the whole city and its future.
OPINION: We know what happens when people lose capacity for critical thought.