By Tate Papworth
Brimbank council will close the doors to the St Albans Leisure Centre in April and push ahead with plans to build a multi million dollar health and wellbeing hub, despite having no external funding for the project.
It means that ratepayers are increasingly likely to solely foot the bill for the hub, which was last projected to be more than $60 million.
Designs of the hub have now been finalised and the council has put the contract for the project out to tender.
An application has been put forward to the state government for funding, but if successful would only bring $2 million to the project.
While the council won’t reveal current costing estimates, a council officer report into the project suggests it will top the current $60 million allocated in the council budget.
The report said that given construction costs are continuing to increase at a significant rate across the board, it is anticipated additional funding will be required to deliver the current adopted scope of the project and will be referred to the annual budget process.
Regardless, the council will now finalise the current tender process and appoint a contractor to demolish the current facility and construct the hub.
Cr John Hedditch lamented the lack of funding from both state and federal governments and said the council should reconsider pushing ahead at this time.
“We go into this project, go to tender, with ratepayers of this community coughing up the lot and that in my view is inappropriate. We should not be doing this,” Cr Hedditch said.
“I wanted to be going into this position with $25 million from the state and federal governments in the bank.
“We had a project that we originally agreed should have that sort of money in it from other partners, but which now has none and for me that is not the way you do good business with these major projects.
“You have have to have financial parameters around them from the start that say if you don’t achieve your goals around partnership funding and things like that, you wait until you get that.”
He argued the financial burden of the project would limit the next council’s ability to deliver major projects like libraries, sports stadiums and women’s facilities.
The leisure centre will be permanently closed to the public from April 14.
The council says the new facility will open in 2022.
