Student housing plan axed by Polytech | Bay of Plenty News | Local News in Bay of Plenty

A proposal to build a multimillion-dollar student accommodation complex in Oropi has come crashing down after Bay of Plenty Polytechnic decided it could not afford it.

Finance director Paul Wollaston told the Bay of Plenty Times Weekend that student accommodation had been an issue on the polytechnic's agenda "on and off for the past six years".

"Student accommodation has been on the table for a while from our point of view and having some accommodation is going to attract students into the Bay, both domestically and internationally," Mr Wollaston said.

"Ideally we've been looking to use a developer who finances it but is [built] on our site, on our land so we have minimal financial investment in it ... but so far we haven't been able to do that.

"If we can find a developer who can fund it and organise the accommodation on our land then this is something we would be very interested to look at."

Mr Wollaston said polytechnic management had tried to find a solution to the issue and it was taken to council.

However, in the end, the proposal to build a student accommodation facility in Oropi Rd next year was "put to a side" because management couldn't justify capital investment in accommodation.

He said the polytech would need "a lot of external funding" to complete a student accommodation project and it "wouldn't jeopardise other capital developments at the expense of this".

The polytechnic's main concern was developing courses and specialty areas that attracted students to study in the Bay, Mr Wollaston said.

"Already we've got outstanding focuses on marine and agricultural, engineers and metallurgy, linking with our unique TiDA centre (Titanium Industry Development Association) and road transport and logistics."

One of the polytechnic's recent projects was the $4 million engineering building, which also housed the titanium research.

Earlier this year, it was announced a new downtown campus in Tauranga would be built, bringing more than 6000 students and an additional $70 million a year into the local economy.

With this increase in student numbers, Mr Wollaston said a student accommodation facility was needed but not necessary.

"It would greatly assist the quality of institutions in the Western Bay, through us or the University of Waikato as our partners, or other tertiary institutes.

"We're very conscious a lot of students in the Western Bay are going outside of Tauranga to study.

"We're not trying to stop these students because some might want have to move for different subject specialties or to get away from home, and we're not going to change that overnight but we are able to change by increasing the range of courses available and this has been something that we've progressively been addressing."