A flash expensive Stadium is low on Christchurch’s priorities.

No politician, local or national, is brave enough to issue an exact figure on what Christchurch’s proposed covered stadium will cost. There’s something to be said in that. The broad figure bandied around is somewhere north of 300 million. That’s 100 million dollars more than Dunedin’s stadium and 200 million more than the old Lancaster Park. Let’s bear in mind at present the local Christchurch City Council is stumping up with 10 million dollars a week of extra rate-payer monies to replace damaged infrastructure e.g. roads, sewage etc. Notice I said replace. This sort is the sort of local-body investment necessary for Christchurch just to get where the city was on the 21st February 2011. Understandably rates are likely to rise significantly in the next decade with these extra costs. Therefore it stuns me to here Mayor Bob Parker state a 35,000-seat stadium is an ''essential piece of infrastructure'' when he is not replacing like with like. That’s to say: if Lancaster Park was adequate for rugby and concerts prior to 22nd Feb – then what has changed that the city needs a replacement that is three times the cost? All Stadiums lose money hand over fist, this we know by experience. Don’t give me that crap about multipliers. Being charitable Christchurch gets at best five times a year a stadium of this nature would be sold-out. Parker knows fully well the council’s subsidiary borrowed to re-build the old Lancaster Park for The World Cup and couldn’t fund that loan with bums on seats. Rate-payers bailed it out. This won’t change. If we can’t make a stadium with a nett debt of 60 million pay just two years ago then what hope do we stand when the amount spirals upwards of 150 million? We can’t ignore the temporary 21,000-seat AMI Stadium in Addington was not even full for the Crusaders' sudden-death Super 15 match against the Bulls. We all know what is happening in Dunedin and they haven’t suffered a natural disaster. Stop painting a new stadium up, ignoring the maths. Forget the feel-good benefits. This city does need a stadium - but not the grandiose one proposed. We cannot justify replacing, subsidising one artificial hockey pitch with three, one library three times bigger, QE2 three times the size, one road with three times the improvements, three times more expensive pipes etc. The flash new central AMI Stadium is a luxury Christchurch can’t currently afford.