Photo: RNZ / Adam Burns
More details have emerged of a Christchurch City Council proposal to give the cash-strapped Arts Centre about half of the funding it asked for.
The trust which owns a collection of heritage buildings in the CBD has warned without more funding - specifically $1.8 million a year- it will fold.
More than 4000 public submissions have urged the council to support the Arts Centre, with many citing the heritage value of the buildings and the importance of the programmes it runs.
During deliberations on the council's draft ten-year spending budget, staff have proposed giving the Arts Centre $820,000 a year, on top of an existing $110,000 for the next two years from the Strengthening Communities Fund.
The Arts Centre's model would also be reviewed in the first year.
At a long-term plan workshop this week, council interim chief executive Mary Richardson said she had met with Arts Centre director Philip Aldridge, and that the pair had agreed about $900,000 of funding would work for both parties. This would involve the trust deferring funding of depreciation in the short term.
Christchurch mayor Phil Mauger previously said that it might be time for the Arts Centre to get new trustees.
The mayor said the Arts Centre did not have an asset management plan or a sustainable operating model, and needed to operate more as a commercial entity.
Mauger said, for instance, he would like the trust to look at passing on the costs of rates and insurance to tenants.
Aldridge said the mayor was wrong to say the Arts Centre was not being run as a commercial entity.
He said the nature of heritage buildings was that it was impossible to pass on all of the costs, but the tenancies did pay market rates.
"We've actually maximised the revenue that we get from the site. I'm not quite sure how you can be more commercial than being fully tenanted at full market rates."
Any new trustees would face the same issues the current trustees were facing, he said.
The council's long-term plan is set to be adopted in June.