The Southern Institute of Technology board remains undecided if it will build apartments as part of Invercargill’s city block development.

The land has been purchased and cleared at the corner of Kelvin and Tay St, while building consent has also been lodged with the Invercargill City Council for the apartments.

Amalgamated Builders Ltd [ABL] was appointed to carry out the build with construction initially earmarked to start this month.

However, SIT board chairperson Alison Broad said the board was undecided if it will continue with the project.

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She added it had a ‘neutral’ stance on the matter at the moment.

The SIT hit pause on the project in March when the impact of Covid-19 became a reality.

Also in the mix was the fact the previous SIT board, which made the initial decision to buy the land for the apartments, has now been replaced as part of the Government’s vocational education reform.

In September last year, the Invercargill Licensing Trust and SIT announced they would join forces to develop a link between the Kelvin Hotel and SIT’s proposed apartment building to create a fully operational training hotel.

SIT has applied for Government support for the apartments through the “shovel ready’’ funding but has yet to get any confirmation on the application.

At a SIT board meeting on Wednesday, board member Barry Jordan said with the firming up of funding and initiatives around its online learning programme SIT2Learn, SIT looked like it would have a surplus for the financial year of around $1.3m.

”Of course that is this financial year, 2021 is the really tough one because that’s when the internationals will be felt.

”We will have a good year this year, but we have to be cautious about our decisions because the next 18 months to two years will be a lot tougher,’’ Jordan said.

SIT’s acting chief executive Maree Howden said SIT had 740 equivalent fulltime international students this year with about 400 of them predicted to return next year.

It meant that income would likely be halved, she said.