Source: Porirua City Council
Porirua City Council has agreed to extend the agreement to lease of Rangituhi which will allow the developer of a proposed tourism venture for the city more time to lock in the overseas investment it needs.
Porirua Adventure Park is a tourism project proposed to be built on part of Rangituhi, the maunga close to Porirua’s CBD. Once fully developed, the park plans to feature a sightseeing gondola, summit restaurant, zipline, mountain biking, surf simulator, and heli-tour activities – designed to appeal to both domestic and international visitors.
In 2019 Council agreed in principle to support the development, through an agreement to lease of Council-owned land. The project is yet to progress, but a refreshed report to Council shows that overseas investors have now been lined up by the developer. To allow the developer to apply to the Overseas Investment Office (OIO) for approval, the agreement to lease date needed to be extended.
The Council agreed today to a date extension to the Agreement to Lease to 31 December 2026.
A MartinJenkins report commissioned to assess the benefits and risks of the project found that if the park goes ahead it would be a major regional tourism asset with the potential to generate significant economic and other benefits for Porirua and the Wellington region. The report said that while the development is not without risk, those risks are similar in nature and scale to when Council considered the original proposal and entered the agreement to lease.
The report concluded that extending the condition date in the agreement to lease was a reasonable step for the Council to take to allow the Overseas Investment Office application to go ahead.
The report outlined the benefits to Porirua City and the wider community including:
- employment creation: 43 full-time jobs in Porirua during construction and 87 full-time jobs once the park was up and running
- benefits to local businesses: an estimated $12m to Porirua’s GDP during construction and $12.8m per year once fully operational
- regional tourism benefits: an estimated $8.8m to Wellington’s GDP during construction, and $14.4m per year (through operations and visitor expenditure)
- lease income for Porirua City Council: potential rental income of $0.5 – $0.8million per year under the lease agreement
- wider cultural, environmental and recreational benefits.
Today’s report was considered by the Council in a public excluded session due to the commercially sensitive information in the proposal.