The Teviot Valley community will soon be consulted on the Roxburgh Entertainment Centre rebuild.

A community meeting in early December will give locals a chance to hear about the process moving forward, the Teviot Valley Community Board decided on Thursday.

The project steering committee that was formed in July, has been working on a number of alternative location options.

Council’s project manager Gareth Robinson prepared some initial cost and timing estimates, and outlined the decision-making steps involved with a site location change for the committee to consider.

A detailed report would come back to the board in March 2026, before being putting forward into council’s Long Term Plan( LTP).

An indemnity insurance payout of approximately $4 million is expected to be finalised in the coming weeks, with negotiations for the final settlement on-going.

The total sum insured for replacement of the old Roxburgh Entertainment Centre is $6.4 million, with the final settlement figure to be determined by build costs that reflect a like-for-like replacement. 

New board member Becky Slade said it was important the committee was being completely transparent with everything, “so everyone knows all of the facts on what is best for them.”

Board chair Mark Jessop said the opportunity to look at other sites was definitely something worth doing.

He said the aim of the steering committee wasn’t to design a new build, as some people in the community were led to believe, but to have a look at what the community needed.

“It’s to determine what the needs could be of groups moving forward that could be using the building.”

Mayor Tamah Alley said it was important that the community understood how much extra time would be involved in the process of investigating alternative sites.

She said changes were also afoot in central government, and warned that “we won’t be operating in the same landscape as now, and we don’t know what that looks like.”

Board member Curtis Pannett said they just needed a few months to investigate further options, and the community meeting will be held on December 11 at 7pm. It was thought a community survey might be the best way to find out the community’s feedback.

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