Sunday Star-Times, 12 October 2008, p. A4.
The Carisbrook Stadium Trust has received just $30 of private funding towards the construction of Dunedin’s proposed new Awatea St stadium - $55,499,970 short of its target.
The revelation comes in a series of emails between trust commercial manager Guy Hedderwick and anti-stadium lobbyist Bev Butler.
And in a sign trust bosses are uncomfortable with Butler’s continued questioning of its activities Hedderwick sought advice from chief executive Ewan Soper about how to deal with her - but sent his request to Butler by mistake: “Hi Ewan - At what point do I tell her to piss off - Regards Guy”.
A short time later Hedderwick sent Butler an email apologising for sending “an email in error” and asked her to “ignore it and/or delete it”. But Butler told the Sunday Star-Times she would do no such thing.
Contractors have been called to tender for construction contracts to build the stadium which trust chairman Malcolm Farry has always promised won’t cost more than $188 million - a figure that hasn’t changed during the past several years despite hikes in construction costs.
The Dunedin City Council has agreed, in principle, to fund $91.4m although $20m of that has to come from sources other than rates. The Otago Regional Council has agreed to conditionally contribute $37.5m and the Community Trust of Otago $10m.
Butler said the trust was responsible for finding the balance from private funding and she was simply trying to find out, on behalf of the public, how it intended to do so.
The email that prompted Hedderwick’s “piss off” comments asked: “Can you advise whether any money received or unconditionally promised from the private sector for such things as naming rights, corporate boxes, or ground rents are considered by the CST to be operating revenue or as donations to construction costs? Can you also confirm what proportion of this income will be redistributed to the Otago Rugby Football Union? Bearing in mind that the required level of private funding for construction is ($55.5million), how do you anticipate that this disparity of ($55,499,970) is to be met?
Soper, in an email to the Star-Times, said the trust always endeavoured to respond to public enquiries. “We sincerely regret the email sent to Ms Butler on 1 October… Our response fell below the standards we set ourselves and we apologised to her immediately. We have offered to meet with Ms Butler to go through her enquiries in detail, an offer which still stands.”
Soper said the trust has a private sector fundraising target of $45.5m towards the total construction budget for the new stadium and an estimated $10m of bridging finance.
“We will achieve our fundraising target from the sale of memberships, seating products and corporate suites ($41.5m) and sale of sponsorship products ($14m).”
But he conceded that, to date, they’d raised nothing. Only registrations of interest for membership products had been received totalling 40% of the target. “The trust is currently in the process of formalising these registrations into contractual agreements.”
He remained confident it would achieve the required 60% of the target by February.
“The trust is not relying on donations to meet the fundraising targets, but gratefully accepts donations from individuals who wish to express their support for the new Otago Stadium in this way. We have received $30 in donations to date.”
