Photo: 123RF
The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora will be forced to dissolve and its costs will fall on ratepayers without support from the Christchurch City Council, its director Philip Aldridge says.
The Arts Centre is a trust which owns New Zealand's largest collection of heritage buildings, in central Christchurch, on behalf of the city's residents and leases them to various creative and commercial tenants to foster the arts and culture.
Its heritage buildings were badly damaged during the 2011 earthquake, but it has completed a $205 million restoration of them.
The trust had no committed ongoing funding from central or local government, but during the past three years received $5.5 million from the Christchurch City Council in the form of a grant to complete restoration projects.
But the council has budgeted no money for the trust in its current draft long-term plan.
Aldridge said without council support, the trust would have to dissolve.
"We have been consistently funded . . . from the word go in 1975, the Arts Centre has been funded by the council," Aldridge said.
"Without public subsidy it's impossible to run a large arts organisation, particularly one whose home is the largest collection of heritage buildings in the country. It's very, very successful - we're fully tenanted, we've got everyone at market rates. It was fantastic restoration - it was done on time and on budget, it's all very competently run, and it's run on a shoestring.
The Arts Centre has undergone years of restoration after the 2011 earthquake. Photo: Moda Fotographica
"But the results are magnificent, the place is beautiful, its teeming with activity, its a massive tourism centre, we've got 980,000 people [visiting] per annum.
"It's major draw in the city, two and a half hectares right in the city centre. It's quite an expensive bit of kit to run and you can never get a decent return from heritage buildings - not even enough to cover the cost of running these buildings. So we've always survived by having a public subsidy, just like Te Papa does or Auckland Museum."
The biggest difficulty had been the increase in the trust's annual insurance premiums from $125,000 before the earthquakes to $1.2 million now.
The trust needed at least $1.8 million annually to survive, but that was much less than what ratepayers would have to fork out if it folded, Aldridge said.
"We put a proposal to the council last September requesting overall funding of between $1.8 million to $2.2 million per annum - $1.8 million being the absolute minimum that would allow the trust to survive, a little bit more would help us to actually activate the place to some degree.
"We proposed that be structured that they absorb our insurance into their portfolio, where they could probably get it less expensively than we can, that they forgive the rates of $205,000 per annum because we got a legal opinion saying we shouldn't be paying rates and they give us a cash grant to make up the difference.
"They came back and said they didn't like the idea of giving us that amount of money, and they didn't like the alternative of us folding which unfortunately is what's going to happen if we don't get this grant.
"The idea of that is really catastrophic - the assets will have to be assigned to a new owner, that owner is extremely likely to be the council . . . the council wouldn't get the grants, the sponsorships, the donations we get.
"They'd have to carry on doing what we do and the ratepayer would have to stump up more money. We've had grants of $9 million over the last three years, so to fund all the things that's funded the ratepayer will have to pay. That's why this is such an ill-conceived scheme."
There was no alternative to dissolving the trust without council support, Aldridge said.
"It's just a reality of the numbers. Without the grant then the directors of the trust would not have confidence that we would be a going concern and the only option for them as directors would be to initiate the process of dissolving the trust. It's not meant to be a threat, but it's 'please, do you recognise that this is the only alternative'."
The Arts Centre had cut all the costs it could, including staff numbers and salaries, and there were no cash reserves it could draw on, he said.
Residents should use the council's long-term plan public consultation to call for funding, Aldridge said.
"There are quite a lot of people who are vociferously saying this is an absurd decision and will be making submissions saying please fund the Arts Centre, and we would encourage as many people as possible to tell the councillors that actually this is vital.
"This is part of Christchurch, this is a part of our defining character, there's nothing else in the country like this, there's not many places in the world like this."
With the support of the people, the council would support the trust, Aldridge said.
Money issues at council also
Phil Mauger Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon
But the council was facing its own fiscal difficulties with a 13 percent rates rise on the cards this year.
Christchurch Mayor Phil Mauger said the council had been briefed on the Arts Centre by staff and noted it during a public workshop.
"At the end of January 2024, the Arts Centre Trust Board Chair provided a further update reiterating the Arts Centre's view on its mandate and financial position," Mauger said.
"The Chair noted that the Arts Centre will make a formal submission regarding its funding as part of the Long-Term Plan and that the LTP process is the appropriate place to elaborate on this update.
"Advice is now being prepared for the Council by Council staff on the Arts Centre Board's current analysis."
Mauger said he was looking forward to receiving the Arts Centre Trust Board submission and staff advice on it.
