Broad Bay residents must signal "a good strong 'yes' or a good strong 'no' " to a proposal that would see the community hall sold to pay for a new community facility, Broad Bay Waterfront Inc secretary Allan Potter says.
Residents would vote in a secret ballot, at a meeting tonight, whether to seek resource consent for a $1.4 million shared facility with the Broad Bay Boating Club.
Votes would not be counted for five days, to allow for postal votes.
If residents did not approve the next stage - commissioning detailed design drawings and obtaining resource consent from the Dunedin City Council and Otago Regional Council - the opportunity to partner with the boating club could be lost, Mr Potter believed. If the project stalled, the boating club would probably upgrade its existing facility.
Mr Potter suspected the vote would be close as the issue divided people - but he hoped for a decisive result.
"We need a clear mandate from the community."
Some residents had lost their enthusiasm because of "nostalgia" over losing the hall - the "carrot" dangled to attract the boating club in the first place.
"There's been a 180 [degree turn] done since then [by some people] and they're a little bit nervous about the whole thing." Waterfront Inc was formed in 2007 to drive the joint venture proposal.
The hall would be sold at a late stage of the project; the promise of its sale was vital to obtain community funding grants to pay for the rest of the project.
"Why not have a new facility where you've only got one expense to upkeep, rather than two older buildings that are just going to suck money up?"
Broad Bay Community Centre president Sean Hogan agreed more than a simple majority was needed for "moral authority".
To vote, residents must be community centre members.
Voters are given two options - the shared venture with the boating club, or investigating redeveloping the existing hall.
As the hall was on freehold land, a lengthy disposal process was not required to realise the proceeds. The property is listed by the Dunedin City Council as having land value of $124,000, and capital value of $215,000.
Mr Hogan said the shared venture would provide an important focal point for the township that it lacked.
No-one wanted to jeopardise the community's asset, the hall, and no venture was entirely without risks, but these could be mitigated with good planning.
The proposal was a one-off opportunity for a multipurpose venue shared with the boating club.
In a newsletter, Mr Hogan acknowledged the risks - of building on the water given rising sea levels, the financial risk and the risk of losing the present hall site, which had development potential.
Keep Our Hall spokeswoman Sarah McDougall said the hall had played in integral part in the community for more than 50 years. It had witnessed many celebrations and gatherings and contributed to the atmosphere of the township.
She believed the proposed facility, while being commercially successful by attracting wedding and other bookings from wider Dunedin, would not be a proper local facility.
