Central Lakes Trust (CLT) has granted $1.75M to the further development of the cycle trails linking the Great Rides of New Zealand in its latest round of funding, marking year four of a five year grant commitment.

“The completed Lake Dunstan Trail is stage one of five to establish an additional 170 kilometres of trail linking Queenstown and Wanaka to existing New Zealand Cycle Trails,” Central Otago Queenstown Trail Network Trust (COQTNT) chair Stephen Jeffery said.

The remaining four stages are being worked on concurrently, with some more advanced than others.

“CLT’s overall commitment of $11.15M is five times greater than any previous grant and still remains the largest grant to date,” CLT chief executive Susan Finlay said.

She “couldn’t be prouder” of the trust’s commitment to the development of the cycle trail network, she said.

“The amount of people utilising the Lake Dunstan Trail is evidence of what an asset it is for the community, and shows the potential of what the entire network will become.”

A total of $4.73M of the $9.60M 2021/2022 grants budget was approved at the first board meeting of the 2021/2022 financial year.

“$3.57M was to organisations we have long standing relationships with, including the COQTNT grant of $1.75M. These grants were approved on a multi-year basis,” Susan said.

The trust processes multi-year grants at the start of each financial year, accounting for a large portion of the grants budget allocated.

CLT grants manager Mat Begg said multi-year granting is a high trust model that the CLT only considers with long serving grantees and it reduces the administrative burden of applying year-on year.

The Central Lakes Arts Support Scheme (CLASS) is another example of a CLT initiative to be granted on a multi-year basis.  

The scheme was created by the trust in 2008 to promote arts at a local ‘grassroots’ level. It is administered by the four local community arts councils, including Upper Clutha Community Arts. Grants are available to the tune of $2,000 per applicant or project each year.

A new group to receive funding is the Rock Quest Charitable Trust, which has received support to put on the Central Otago Smokefreerockquest and Smokefree Tangata event which will be held at the Lake Wānaka Centre on June 19, 2021.

Since the CLT was established 21 years ago, it has returned more than $123M back into the community. This year’s grants budget is the largest in the trust’s history, at $9.60M.

PHOTO: Supplied