At an extraordinary Timaru District Council meeting last week, councillors voted seven to two in favour of discarding initial plans to create a theatre and museum heritage facility in Stafford St, opting to seek a new site for the project on which a combined theatre, museum, library and civic space could be built.
South Canterbury Museum Trust chairman John Simpson said the trust was now unsure of exactly where things stood for a new exhibition space.
"There was a lot of hard work that went in by a lot of different people, not only within the trust but also the wider circle of people that know us and wanted to support the trust.
"A lot of people had the vision and shared our vision of the heritage hub on Stafford [St] but I guess it’s obviously not to be that way."
The trust had set itself a $3million target to raise funds towards the fitout of a new exhibition space in the proposed heritage hub and had achieved $2m of that figure in pledges and money in hand already.
The heritage hub would have housed an atrium museum and exhibition space and that would have flowed through to the theatre.
Mr Simpson said he did not know how things would go with the new "Plan B".
"In some respects I think it will be a compromise as often these things are. I don’t fully understand plan B, nor do I understand how quickly plan B came to be the preferred ‘let’s look closer into this’.
"We understood that the reason councillors were reluctant to support option one as it stood was that it was too expensive at $57.1m and I understand that because I am a ratepayer. None of us want to be facing significant rate increases due to a significant capital expenditure.
"However, in my mind the only way plan B stacks up in my mind is if it was significantly cheaper.
"If the only reason the council has done this 180 is to reduce costs then I’m sure our trust would support that. But if it’s going to be more expensive what has been achieved here?"
The trust had been a major supporter of the South Canterbury Museum since 1997, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for improvements, including the extension and enhanced exhibition space at the current Perth St building.
He said that the trust had actually discussed combining the theatre, library and museum in the past.
"We thought why don’t we bring all four services together including the Aigantighe [Art] Gallery or any of those council-owned services into one building but we couldn’t get it to work.
"It just didn’t make sense when you analyse it. They all are completely different markets and if we go right back to the $57.1m, it was going to be more cost efficient to build the two buildings than it would to build one of each and that’s what we bought into originally.
"The heritage hub made sense. It was in a good location in the town, a location that needs significant uplifting in terms of its presentation and this was one way of accomplishing, in part, some of that."
He said it would be a disservice to the region if a state-of-the-art facility was not delivered.
"There is a degree of public frustration at what’s happening and the time it’s taking when in fact there’s nothing’s happening. All we’ve done is extended things by another six months while they do some price investigation and go to another public consultation.
"If we end up being compromised or with mediocre facilities that’s to the detriment of the people of South Canterbury and that’s my heart. We were in it because we wanted something special for our district, that’s the museum side of it.
"This whole concept was built around community, involvement and participation. We are not here for any other reason than the betterment of the museum which should hopefully be for the enjoyment and betterment of the facilities offered to our local community."
Mr Simpson said he was thankful for all the calls and messages of support he and trust members had received after last week’s decision.
"From the trust’s perspective, and this has nothing to do with the bricks and mortar or the ratepayers. We’d like to think those people who have supported us will continue to do so, so we can at least establish whether plan B will be a flyer.
"We need answers, it needs to be transparent and it needs to be sooner rather than later."
The trust planned to hold an emergency meeting to discuss the matter further.
