Venu Menon
Wellington, October 5,2023
The Wellington City Council will vote to approve the proposed budget increase for the refurbishment of the Town Hall, described as one of the most complex construction projects in New Zealand.
Commissioned at an estimated completion cost of $182.4 million in 2019, the project will cost an extra $70 million to $147 million, Mayor Tory Whanau and Wellington city councillors were told on Wednesday.
The proposed budget increase will be voted on at the Council meeting on 25 October 2023.
The fate of the project hangs on the upcoming vote.
“We are dealing with challenging economic conditions, but we are more than half-way through the project which was started by a previous council. There’s no way we can turn back. We must see it through to completion,” Mayor Whanau said, adding, “However, I join Wellingtonians at being frustrated and annoyed at the news of another cost increase.”
She described the Town Hall as “an old, fragile, complicated heritage building built on reclaimed land,” that experienced new structural and ground challenges that “are significantly impacting costs.” Halting the project and “mothballing the building, or demolishing it” was not an option available to the Council, Whanau pointed out.
Apart from the Town Hall’s heritage listing, there were also consenting constraints involving a breach of the Building Act. It currently has a “start to finish” consent.
The Town Hall was declared quake-prone in 2009.
“The community wanted the Council to seismically upgrade the building and reopen it as a world-class music venue. It is highly unfortunate that this comes at a considerable cost, but we will have to confront this reality. We can’t leave it sitting there unfinished,” Mayor Whanau explained.
The renovated Town Hall aimed to be a hub for civic and community events, and a centre for the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (NZSO), as well as the Victoria University of Wellington’s New Zealand School of Music.
Quake strengthening work
The Town Hall was closed in 2013 after the Seddon earthquake, with strengthening work launched in 2019. It involved installing new base isolators (flexible pads that reduce shaking in an earthquake) without causing damage to the heritage building.
The building now stands on its new foundation.
However, the strengthening work was still ongoing, with ground conditions hampering progress.
“Retrofitting an older building to withstand earthquakes is a technically demanding task, involving detailed engineering assessments and specialised construction techniques,” according to Craig Gibson, site manager for the company overseeing the renovation.
Anthony Pattison, the Council’s structural project manager, said the earthquake strengthening involved nearly four years of design effort and several months of workshops before work on strengthening the basement commenced on site.
“We weren’t sure how the building would behave once we started driving the sheet piles into the ground, as the vibrations would emanate through the ground and up through the structure,” Pattison explained.
However, just when the work was about to start a magnitude six earthquake struck Wellington the night before. “The building remained safe and secure through this earthquake, and it was a testament to the structural design and construction,” Anthony noted.
The quake was a timely reminder of the need to lay the new foundations to strengthen the Town Hall and “protect it against those sorts of events in the future.”
But the blowout in the cost of repairing the Town Hall was clearly causing frustration within the council, with Councillor Diane Calvert claiming that the council was facing a financial crisis. Mayor Whanau was quick to deny the claim.
But the Town Hall renovation was only one in the pile-up of infrastructure projects in Wellington. The Opera House and the Michael Fowler Centre have recently been declared earthquake-prone, while work on the Central Library has a $217 million price tag attached to it, prompting Mayor Whanau to call for support from the central government.
Venu Menon is an Indian Newslink reporter based in Wellington
