The Christchurch City Council has released yet another cost estimate for the multi-Use Arena.

It now says it will need to increase the project budget by $50 million to get to a 30,000 seat capacity, not 88 million dollars as originally outlined by staff.

It follows last week’s announcement that the stadium with 30,000 seats would cost about $67 million dollars.

The new advice comes from “construction experts” BESIX Watpac ahead of Thursday’s Council meeting, at which a Notice of Motion to increase the seating capacity from 25,000 to 30,000 will be considered.

Staff were forced to have another look at costings after Councillor Sam MacDonald outlined his concerns at the lack of detail made available to the public.

The report said adding an additional 5000 seats requires changes to the roof span, the number and size of stairways, the concourse width, and the engineering requirements of the arena, all of which add significantly to the costs.

The report says while the final costs won’t be clear until the developed design has been completed and BESIX Watpac has submitted a fixed Design and Construct Contract Price, their preliminary estimates suggest increasing the capacity of the arena to 30,000  seats will add $50 million to the bill.

The Council does not have that on budget. The budget for the arena currently sits at $473 million.

Lianne Dalziel’s office has told Chris Lynch the mayor will be holding a press conference straight after Thursday’s council meeting.