Wellington town hall strengthening cost blowout
Yesterday we issued a media release in response to a Dominion Post report stating that earthquake strengthening work on the Wellington Town Hall has been halted due to a $17 million budget blowout. The total cost of the work is now estimated to cost $60 million. We noted that this equals $871 per Wellington household.
Whilst the town hall is a lovely building, at this cost it seems unaffordable, and our understanding from a property expert is that it could be much cheaper to replace it with a new, fit for purpose building using the existing facade and features Wellingtonians treasure. Newstalk ZB covered our release here.
Today the Dominion Post followed up the story, reporting:
Wellington City Council has refused to reveal how much it has already spent on town hall strengthening work, which has been put on hold after a budget blowout of about $17 million.
The Dominion Post revealed yesterday that the cost to strengthen the hall had ballooned from a budgeted $43m to about $60m.
City councillors will have to go back to the debating chamber later this year to decide if it is worth spending that much.
They could look at cheaper alternatives, or at replacing the town hall on the same or a new site.
The council intended to use a base isolation system to bring the strengthened hall up to 140 per cent of the new building standards (NBS).
Engineers have assessed the building as meeting just 20 per cent to 25 per cent of the NBS. Anything under 33 per cent is deemed earthquake-prone.
Work has now stopped, just three months into the three-year programme, as the council considers its options.
Given that ratepayers are paying for the work, we think they should know how much has already been spent on the building, even if work has now been halted due to an overspend. We're requesting the information under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act.
The Council faces the same problems as many Wellington property owners. In some cases it has declined resource consents to demolish dangerous buildings that have been uneconomic to upgrade. It will be interesting to see what the costs (and solution) are.