At the Cromwell Community Board meeting on Tuesday, the board agreed to allow Old Cromwell Incorporated to enter into a memorandum of understanding with the Cromwell and Districts Community Trust (CDCT) to enable construction of the replica village.
The board also agreed to apply to Land Information New Zealand to amend the Old Cromwell Township Lake Front Management Agreement to include an extended area.
CDCT chairwoman Ali Ballantine spoke to the board at the meeting. She said the trust agreed with the board’s recommendations and recognised that construction plans had been obtained.
The trust was disappointed it took a year to get to this point due to conflicting advice from council staff, she said.
"The outcome of this means that the projects that we obtained last year ... will now need to be reassessed, which is unfortunate."
The delay also meant the plan to use Otago Polytechnic stonemasonry students to work on the footings and footpaths would no longer work as the course was discontinued.
This meant the trust would need to find extra funding for the work, she said.
"We just want to get on with it, we’ve got the support of the community, the support of the council now, which is great and it’s a fantastic project, which is really going to be an asset to Cromwell," she said.
Old Cromwell Incorporated representative Helen Scoles told the board it had been a long process with the organisation beginning work in 1992.
In 2004 the Cromwell & Districts Promotion Group took over the project.
