The marathon job to fix Wellington's earthquake-prone heritage town hall has become even harder.
Photo: Wellington City Council
The budget has shot up by $37 million and the completion date now even further off.
Covid is being blamed - the cost of material like steel has doubled and become a nightmare to import into the country.
The town hall is 120 years old, and has been closed for almost 10 years.
It's a category 1 heritage building, on reclaimed land, in a city nestled on top of a fault line.
One of the country's most complex construction projects has been tasked with making it safe.
Today, birdage scaffolding riddles the inside of the hall and all signs of heritage are covered for protection, like the Wunderlich pressed tin ceiling.
It is dark and dusty and there are beams holding up walls and archways.
The building is having more than 150 base isolators installed in its foundations - big rubber pads which move and stretch in an earthquake, reducing the sway and shake on a building.
Wellington City council unanimously agreed to save the hall in 2019 at a cost of $145 million.
Yesterday, council chief executive Barbara McKerrow said the increase was "unpalatable" but necessary.
She said the "complex web of risks" with the project have not only all become a reality, but been made worse because of the pandemic.
Steel, concrete and reinforcing a 'nightmare' to get
The council's project manager Bede Crestani said, for example, steel piles are essential for the strengthening process, but are a nightmare to get right now.
"[The pipes are] coming from China, they're manufactured there with a specific grade, and we're struggling to get them on a ship," he said
"Now ships can't go through Australia, we used to be able to track ships and we can't even get a tracking on them anymore."
Crestani said the price of steel has just about doubled.
Shipping containers for the steel used to cost about $1000, but are now closer to $9000.
Concrete and reinforcing are troublesome currently too, and further down the track Crestani expected timber and plaster could also remain hard to get.
Barbara McKerrow said these are some of the things which are causing spike, and were not foreseeable when the budget was confirmed in 2019 - before the pandemic.
Inflation and the disruption of lockdowns since March 2020 also contributed to the delays and cost constraints.
Council 'has its hands tied'
Dann McComb, the council official overseeing the project told council yesterday it had no real option but to keep the project afloat.
"Stop the project? That's an option, but we can't really. What would you have? You'd have a half build heritage building which would be difficult to demolish" he said.
The council has contractual obligations to the builder, Naylor Love, and lease agreements underway with Victoria University of Wellington and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.
Councillor Fleur Fitzsimons voted for the project in 2019 and says the council's hands are tied, but lessons need to be learnt from this.
"Council in the future needs to be honest with Wellingtonians. It's misleading to imply that heritage means 'We have something no matter what the price tag'.
"Sometimes it shouldn't be saved and it should be left in the past, and that's what progress for a city means."
From $43 million to $182.4 million
Since its closure in 2013, the cost estimated to strengthen the building has blown up.
Originally, the cost for the strengthening was estimated at $43 million.
From 2013 it jumped to $60m, then to $90m, and $112m in 2019 before a final $145 million was agreed on unanimously by council.
The council said the project had always been extremely challenging, and was made more difficult by the Seddon and Kaikōura earthquakes.
It was not the only Civic Square building needing quake strengthening.
In 2020 the council agreed it would strengthen the at-risk city central library, which closed earlier that year.
Just last month, design plans were unveiled for a $188 million upgrade of the new library - Te Matapihi ki te Ao Nui.
Initial stripping and demolition of the library has already begun.