$1.5m equestrian hub gallops ahead
PLANS for a proposed $1.5 million equestrian exhibition centre at Stony Creek will be finalised within the next week.
The project is expected to be presented to South Gippsland Shire Council as early as May.
The plans for the centre include a 70 by 40 metre indoor arena and a block of 120 undercover stalls that will convert to 60 stables.
South Gippsland Shire Council recreation officer Ian Murphy said council has $30,000 available to get the project to a funding ready stage.
He said once the plans and business case were complete, an economic impact assessment would need to be undertaken before the project was presented to council.
“We will have a brief out to a few companies shortly and by mid March they should be able to start. We will give them six weeks at most,” he said.
“By May or June we should be able to present the project to council with a funding plan.
“Once there is a plan the user groups are happy with, we need to start to throw numbers around for what it would cost.”
Mr Murphy said the proposal needed to show what the project would cost, how the facility would operate and what economic benefit would be.
He said the plan was to present the proposal to the current council. Council elections take place in October.
“We are pretty close to getting the project over the line with the current council,” he said.
Mr Murphy said if the project was approved by council, lobbying to secure the funding needed to build the facility could start.
“Realistically, we are looking at 12 to 18 months to obtain funding,” he said.
The project is expected to be worth around $1.5 million. Mr Murphy said $1 million of that total would ideally be funded by an external source.
He said if the community raised a further $100,000, council could potentially fund the remaining $400,000.
“We would prefer the majority of the funding came from one source, such as Regional Development Victoria,” he said.
Mr Murphy said council would be in a position to provide funds for the construction of the exhibition centre, but it would not manage it once it was built.
“Ultimately, someone would be employed to run the facility. In the short term, the manager would need to attract events, as well as manage bookings,” he said.
“The business case would need to investigate what the facility’s annual income would be, which will need to be enough to cover maintenance, bills and wages to show the centre will stand up on its own.”
The project is progressing well and a core working group has done a lot of work to get it to the current stage.
If anyone is keen to be a part of the project group, they should contact Janine Bullock at [email protected].
Shed talk: meeting recently to discuss the proposal for an exhibition centre at Stony Creek were from left, representing the Stony Creek Racing Club Jenny O’Sullivan, South Gippsland Shire Council councillor Andrew McEwen, Stony Creek exhibition centre working group member Janine Bullock, South Gippsland Shire Council recreation officer Ian Murphy and Stony Creek exhibition centre working group member Bev Shandley.
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Posted by Tayla Kershaw on Feb 16 2016. Filed under Featured, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
