Council turns $3.5 million site into staff car park for just $30,000

A council in New Zealand is turning three vacant blocks of land, worth millions of dollars combined, into a car park for staff.

Horizons Regional Council made the decision to use the empty lots on the popular Victoria Avenue and Grey Street, in Palmerston North, as parking for its regional staff, RNZ reports.

Last year the council paid an estimated NZ$30,000 (about $27,000) to lay down metal along the site, which are worth a combined NZ$3.5 million (about $3.2 million).

Horizons Chief Executive Michael McCartney cited ongoing local government reforms and growing uncertainty around the future of local governance as the reason building plans would not proceed.

At a meeting on Tuesday, McCartney confirmed the sites would be used as car parking for regional council staff.

He also noted it was “prudent” to upgrade the vacant sites so they could be used and potentially even sold off.

MWRC Holdings Limited (MWRC), a commercial investment company owned by the council, has a number of sites on Victoria Avenue in its property portfolio.

MWRC purchased 7 Victoria Avenue in 2021 for NZ$1.1 million (about $1 million). Two years later, the company bought 3 Victoria Avenue for NZ$1.6 million (about $1.45 million) and 184 Grey Street for NZ$800,000 (about $730,000).

McCartney told RNZ that if the site next to Regional House was eventually sold, the council would expect to make back the sum of what was spent on the three sites.

The council voted in August 2025 to demolish the existing Regional House at Victoria Avenue after a seismic assessment a year earlier identified parts of the site as earthquake-prone.

Parking for workers, locals and visitors has long been a premium in the area, with the planned parking space likely to ease traffic congestion.