An $8300 development contribution has delayed the construction of a Christchurch community's bike pump track.
Project leader Christina Freeman has been working towards getting the pump track off the ground in Ferrymead for the past three years with the Heathcote Valley Community Association.
The resource consent was approved in June with a condition the association paid a development contribution towards stormwater and flood protection.
Freeman believes the condition is not fair.
“We’re a community organisation doing this on a volunteer basis, so to have to find another $8300 is a significant chunk,” she said.
The pump track development at Ferrymead Park is estimated to cost $273,000. So far $138,000 has been raised. Of that, $100,000 was granted by Christchurch City Council.
Freeman was planning for the build to start in November, but has had to push it out till January next year due to the extra cost, by which time Freeman hopes all funds will be raised.
Freeman has already been told by New Zealand Community Trust its $30,000 grant cannot be used for the developer contribution because it is not a direct construction cost.
She is concerned other potential funders will tell her the same thing.
She is waiting to hear back on a $100,000 grant application from the Rātā Foundation and will send out more funding requests in the coming weeks.
City council head of planning and consents Mark Stevenson told The Star the pump track was assessed for a developer contribution for stormwater and flood protection activity.
He said the contributions are calculated according to the surface area of the development, which would be increased by the pump track and drain to the Matuku Waterway, part of the city council’s stormwater network.
Said Freeman: “There’s got to be a better way, I don’t know what it is yet, but there’s got to be a better way.”
Freeman is a BMX and mountain biking enthusiast and competed at the BMX World Championships in Auckland in 2023.
She lives in Mt Pleasant and thought of establishing a pump track in Ferrymead while working on the track at Bexley Reserve which opened in 2023.
“There’s not much to do in the Heathcote, Ferrymead, Redcliffs area for teenagers to do,” she said.
“There’s heaps to do for little kids and families but, once you reach a certain age, this area’s pretty boring.”
There is already a clay pump track at Ferrymead Park but is easily damaged when it rains and looks like a “pile of weeds” from afar, said Freeman.
The track she is planning will be made of asphalt.
A number of the grants she has already obtained have a use-by date, and Freeman is concerned about the impact further delays could have on the project.
“The longer it sits there, the more likely (it is) that I’m going to have to go back to those funding organisations cup in hand and say can I please have an extension,” she said.
If she is not given an extension, she would have to reapply for the grant, pushing the project start date out even further.
She wants to push back against the contribution cost but is unsure how to approach it.
Stevenson said the development contributions policy allows the city council to grant a full or partial remission of development contributions in cases where it is satisfied the project is so unique and compelling that requiring the full contribution assessment would be unfair.
It has not received a development contributions remission request in relation to the development so far.
Failing that, Freeman is hopeful it might be possible to pay the development contribution from already allocated city council funds.