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Port Hills Mountainbike Park Seeks Extra Investors

  • Published April 27, 2015 5:14PM UTC
  • Publisher Wholesale Investor
  • Categories Company Updates

By Alan Wood, Stuff, 27th April 2015

A multimillion-dollar Port Hills mountainbike park for those with a penchant for thrills should open in early October 2016.

That is the view of backer Jay Fry though for the moment he is seeking the extra investors needed to give the $25 million dollar project wings.

A confirmed $2m cash injection from the Government depends on the project meeting milestones, Fry says.

The Christchurch Adventure Park is one of a number tourism projects to get backing through the Government’s “tourism growth partnership” scheme.

The investor funds would be part of a $14.25m private equity raising to complete project financing.

These investors will include Kiwi mountain bike enthusiasts plus high net worth individuals from Christchurch. In the next few weeks the park will issue an 65 page information memorandum.

“We’ve (already) got soft commitments (from potential) which are coming in at about $10m … there’s still room for new investors so we’re looking for another $4m approximately,” Fry says.

Bank debt of about $9m has been secured, Fry says.

The longer term ownership structure for the park will be a limited partnership, known as Leisure Investments NZ LP. Investors, who will need to stump up a minimum of $100,000, would be given a degree of anonymity with the LP and be rewarded with distributions. He hopes to complete financing by the end of June.

Fry estimates that about 119,000 day tickets (including season tickets and package tickets) sold annually would enable the project to be profitable.

The park has already received Christchurch City Council consents. A company Fry is an associate of, Select Evolution New Zealand, has secured a lease on 315 hectares of forested Port Hills land between Dyers Pass, Worsleys and the Summit roads.

“The land there is topographically superb for what we are doing, and Christchurch is a city of cycles. Mountainbiking is more popular in New Zealand than any other country, 6 per cent of the population apparently mountainbike according to the International Mountain Bicycling Association.”

Fry says Select Evolution has taken a 50 year lease on forested land owned by McVicar Holdings, tied to a Christchurch family. The lease holder would get a percentage of gross sales.

“It just happened that a local mountain bike enthusiast Tim Prebble was biking in Whistler and mentioned to one of our staff that there was this great opportunity to build a park in Christchurch.

“So my co-principal Fiona Sutton, who owns Select Contracts,  came down to see McVicar to discuss the opportunity.”

He deals with legal and financial issues and stay on an executive team of Select.

The park will have a $6.5m 1.8 kilometre purpose-built lift rising 1427 vertical feet and operating by August 2016, Fry says. There will be 120km of bike trails along with food, beverage and retail areas and $4m of on-site accommodation.

The lift with four man chairs is being manufactured in Austria, though racks to hold bikes will be made locally in Lyttelton.

It will also feature a rock climbing area, zip-lines and a $2.5m 4km-long mountain coaster with a top speed of 80kmh. There would also be “pump” or undulating tracks for bike riders that would be available free to Christchurch residents. Residents would also get a discount on a season pass.

Fry said the park was predicted to bring economic benefits to Christchurch including at least 30,000 additional tourist-based bed nights each year. It would generate 90 full-time and 40 part-time equivalent jobs.

Select Contracts, formed in 1978, was a global consultancy group with corporate offices in Whistler, Dubai and the United Kingdom and operations it oversaw included a Wadi kayak-surf-adventure park in the United Arab Emirates.

Based in Vancouver, Fry first visited Christchurch about four years ago and says he has spent a lot of the last nine months working on the project he has also invested in. His company is Imisol Ltd. “It’s going to be the best and biggest mountain bike park in the southern hemisphere.”

He describes himself as a venture capitalist who has also worked in investment banking, property development.

In future years the park was expected to attract international mountain bike events.

Initially Fry talked through his ideas with Gerry Brownlee and the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (Cera), both supportive of his ideas.  To date about $4m had been invested by Fry and Select.

The Government will provide half the cost towards certain projects within the park, up to its limit of $2m funding, Fry says.

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