Governors Bay jetty to be sold for $1

Christchurch City Council plans to sell the dilapidated Governors Bay jetty for a $1 so that a group set up to restore it can get on with the job.

In a deal approved by the Council today the Governors Bay Jetty Restoration Trust will buy the jetty for $1 so that it can take full control of its restoration.

The Governors Bay jetty has been closed to the public since 2011.

Once the 300-metre long jetty is restored the Trust will sell it back to the Council for $1.

The Governors Bay jetty dates back about 150 years and has been closed since a post-earthquake engineering inspection in 2011 deemed it unsafe.

A condition assessment done in 2014 identified numerous problems with the jetty and estimated that repairing it would cost more than $3 million.

During submissions on the Council’s 2015-25 Long Term Plan residents of Governors Bay asked the Council to partner with them to get the jetty repaired, saying they would fundraise and offer their technical expertise.

The Council subsequently set aside $535,000 to help pay for the repair work.

However, the Governors Bay Jetty Restoration Trust have come to the conclusion that a full restoration would be more viable than repairing the jetty. They want to plan and manage the project themselves and have asked to have full control of the jetty during its restoration.

How much the full restoration of the jetty will cost has yet to be determined.

A report presented to the Council today said the Trust had no interest in retaining ownership of the jetty in the long-term and it would be sold back to the Council at the same price that it was sold to the Trust once all the work had been completed.