Canberra's dragon-boat community fears the cost of relocating and having to "beautify" its shipping container base will will cripple the sport if it doesn't get government assistance.
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Participants are unsure about their future with an imminent expansion set to push them off their Yarralumla home.
The Canberra Dragon Boat Association, currently located at Marina Place, Yarralumla beside the Southern Cross Yacht Club has been preparing to move ahead of an expansion of the Yacht Club's car park.
Association committee member Sue Pidgeon said members were concerned about being left without a base if funds were not available before construction started because the as the cost of relocation, even temporarily, was beyond its capacity.
Under the upgrade, which had been due to start this winter and was pushed back to next year due to coronavirus, the carpark would grow to add 13 spaces and force the CDBA's storage containers off the land.
Prepared and keen to move, in 2017 CBDA submitted to the ACT government a concept plan and costing of a permanent building to house the dragon boats and other equipment at a site in Grevillea Park, and sought government funding to construct the $1.5 million building.
Sport Minister Yvette Berry's office told The Canberra Times a proposal seeking financial support to fund the building had been submitted but would not be drawn on the status of it.
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As a temporary fix Transport Canberra and City Services directorate has allowed the dragon boaters to relocate shipping containers to the Barton site, but Ms Pidgeon said the cost wasn't sustainable.
"It's such an expensive thing for us to be over there, I can't see us being able to continue long-term there, we're just going to use up all our resources we've been saving to put towards a new building," she said.
"Even just getting some funding for a toilet block would enable us to be there temporarily until the funding for a new building actually happens. That would be better than nothing."
The association estimated the cost of a temporary move - which would require the group to hire portable toilets and "beautify" its shipping containers to meet National Capital Authority standards - at $10,000 initially and an additional $6000 annually.
"At the most we've got a conditional agreement we can move our shipping containers over there, as long as we make them all look good so put cladding around them so they don't look like shipping containers," she said.
Ms Pidgeon said the association required a 620m2 building on the proposed site beside Capital Lakes Rowing Club, to house the 12 metres-long boats.
"It's got to have machinery to stack the boats, it would be too enormous to have them side by side," she said.
"After the last election so much money was spent on other things, now we're we're afraid the same thing is going to happen.
"We would really like them to think of this as a community infrastructure project."