Most of it will be design costs and early land purchases. Design is about 10-20% of construction costs which on a multi-billion dollar project adds up pretty quickly.

[–] TagMeInSkipIGotThis 3 points 9 months ago

Yeah, its not like it was 250m of cash spend that's now gone. At least some of that would have been asset purchases, mostly land / buildings, and going through Auckland that would have cost a bunch.

Of course much easier to oppose it on the grounds of its all money completely lost, rather than assets that could be sold to recoup a bunch of that money.

[–] Dave 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I was thinking the land must be super expensive. But then if they have only spend $250M, maybe they haven't bought that much? But I wonder what the new government assets look like compared to that invoice.

[–] terraborra 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

They bought the kiwi bacon building on new north road which on its own was $33m. Not sure what other parcels they purchased but none of the corridor is what I would call cheap.

[–] Dave 4 points 9 months ago

The government has good reason to talk up the price of the project to date, but if they sell the land bought then there's a good chance of recouping a lot of that $250 million. Depending on the timing of buying the land, they might get more than $250 million for selling it 😆