Birdcage successfully moved back to original site

Wednesday, 13 April 2011

Engineers who helped move Auckland's historic Birdcage hotel are said to be ''ecstatic'' after successfully moving the 740-tonne building back to its original site, this afternoon.

The 1886 hotel was moved about 40 metres to allow for work to begin on the Victoria Park tunnel in August last year.

The $340 million tunnel is said to be 80 per cent complete however the last stage of the project could not take place until the hotel was moved back to where it originally sat.

Engineers started moving the hotel yesterday morning using four specially built runway beams and hydraulic pumps to pull the building.

The hotel was moved about 24 metres yesterday and workers spent yesterday afternoon shifting the pumps to the otherside of the building, so they would be positioned to begin pushing the hotel into it place today.

Helen Cook, spokeswoman for Victoria Park Alliance, the company carrying out the shift, said workers finished moving the hotel at 2.20pm today.

''It's a great achievement and a great project.''

Cook said workers were having a ''smoko'' before returning this afternoon to tidy up the construction site.

The hotel, which marks the original shoreline of Freemans Bay, is now sitting over the new tunnel and has been rotated seven degrees, anti-clockwise, so that one side of the tavern will be parallel to the new alignment of Franklin Road.

Ms Cook said engineers had thought it would take two full days, with the project originally expected to be finished this evening.

''It's taken four hours less, it's been an extraordinarily smooth process.''