Wellington's long journey back from Walking Dead to the land of the living

Thursday, 13 May 2021

Earthquake prone Wellington buildings.

2023. Circle it on your calendar.

Right now, parts of inner-city Wellington look like the set of a Walking Dead episode: empty, dark, even malevolent.

A satellite map of the city’s earthquake-prone buildings reveals almost 600 properties yet to be strengthened by the Government-imposed deadline of 2027, including significant Wellington structures.

Some are empty, seemingly abandoned.

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The James Smith carpark building, at the end of a lane next to the Opera House. The building is part of a shabby-looking part of the city.

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Elsewhere along the capital’s commercial spine that is its Golden Mile, some vertebrae are missing or withered; foot traffic is muted and shops are shuttered, their markets undermined by Covid caution, the trend towards working from home, and stuttering business confidence.

The Amora Hotel was closed in 2017, after being deemed earthquake prone.

Wellington City Council (WCC) building portfolio leader Iona Pannett is worried that in little more than five years, the city could be swamped by a sea of red closure stickers.

And Mayor Andy Foster has met with ministers Poto Williams and Michael Wood this week to find ways of stopping that from happening.

However, there are signs that while the phoenix might not yet be rising from the flames, the mythical bird is at least flexing its wings.

The Dominion Post can confirm significant progress on key city buildings left empty because of earthquake issues and insurance wrangles, and plans for others that had, to this point, been shrouded in secrecy.

281116.News.KEVIN STENT/Fairfax NZ. Work began Monday morning on the demolition of earthquake damaged 61 Molesworth Street, Wellington. Building owner Eyal Aharoni in discussions with Mike Scott ,manager of building consents and compliance at Wellington City Council.

The Amora Hotel, a 192-room property on Wakefield St that closed in 2017 after being deemed earthquake prone, will open in 2024, maybe even earlier, as a new five-star hotel.

The massive James Smith carpark building behind it, damaged in the 2016 Kaikōura quake, and the subject of a four-year-long insurance wrangle, is set to open a year earlier.

And on the enormous Reading Cinemas site, which stretches from Courtenay Place to Wakefield St, consents are in place to build a major new supermarket.

All of this means that by 2023 the St James Theatre will have finally lifted the curtain, earthquake-strengthening will have finished at the Town Hall and the capital’s controversial Convention Centre, Tākina, will have opened its doors. There should also be considerable progress on the central library and other significant landmarks.

Primeproperty Group bought the earthquake-prone Amora in 2018, for an undisclosed sum, believed to be in the region of $15 million (records show it was sold in 1999 for $40m).

Many buildings in Wellington - private and public - are still empty, earthquake prone, their futures uncertain.

The hotel has been empty ever since, its insides gutted, windows discolouring with filth and lichen growing on its facade.

Eyal Aharoni, chief executive of Primeproperty Group, said builders would soon start the process of installing viscous dampers to lift the building’s New Building Standard (NBS) to 130 per cent.

“The seismic job is not that difficult, but then you have the fit-out,” he said. “It’s all gutted. There’s no rooms. That will probably take two years or so.”

Aharoni said there had been “strong interest” in the site from global hotel brands. He declined to name them but said it would be “a five-star brand”.

“It could be another brand in New Zealand or it could be a completely new brand that doesn’t exist in New Zealand. It’s not going to be a Sofitel or an InterContinental.”

He was pleased to be making progress because having both the hotel and the James Smith carpark building empty was a “massive cost” to his company in rates, insurance and loan repayments.

“Wellington has horrendous commercial rates, the highest in the country, so you’ve got these buildings that are empty, but they pay three times the level of the residential rates, even though they consume zero services.”

The old Molly Malones pub is now a shabby gateway to the city’s entertainment precinct.

Others will be happy to see some light at the end of that dark, gloomy inner-city tunnel that runs next to the Amora and the empty parking building and connects Wakefield St and the troubled area of Te Aro Park and Manners St.

The area has been a shelter for homeless people, but also a focus for crime at the park and those seeking emergency housing nearby.

A number of shops and buildings along this short section of Manners St are empty. People pass quickly, seemingly eager to escape the funereal feeling of buildings abandoned, livelihoods lost.

But the crime that goes on in this part of Wellington, the subject of a public meeting this week, suggests the shadows of empty shops and dingy laneways are shelter for those with more malevolent intentions.

Aharoni conceded this part of the city was looking a little “more shoddy now”, but disagreed his buildings were the cause of problems in the area.

Pannett said the Amora site had become “problematic” and Wellington Chamber of Commerce boss Simon Arcus said “dilapidated buildings” encouraged “negative outcomes socially”.

Reading International has been tight-lipped on plans for its Courtenay Place complex, but one of its partners, Countdown said it was still working on plans with Reading for a supermarket in the building.

“They turn into negative places to be,” he said. “You don’t want a city full of dark alleyways and lurking shadows.”

Other dark places and challenges remain in a city struggling to regain its feet in the perfect storm of an economy-sapping pandemic and a long, expensive programme of earthquake strengthening.

Molly Malones, on the corner of Taranaki St and Courtenay Pl, used to be the gateway to the city’s party zone.

But the party ended in 2016 when it was damaged in the Kaikōura quake and slated for demolition the following year.

The carpark behind the Reading Cinemas complex on Wakefield St. A new supermarket is planned for the site, with access to what is being described as the Reading Centre.

Four years on it remains standing but empty and in a poor state. The large, impressive chandelier inside is the only reminder of its glory days. Timber and broken masonry litter its floor.

Andrew Cotterrell, legal director of building owner Cornerstone Partners, said the property was saved after the public showed strong support for keeping it, but progress on remediation work was stalled for about two years by difficult negotiations with a neighbouring business.

He said it would be a bar again. And soon.

“We’ve got an engineering proposal. We’ve got some testing that’s been done. A quantity surveyor to work out a price.”

Simon Arcus says housing affordability has turned into a major issue for Wellington businesses.

He didn’t have a timeframe, but “it’s a small building, small project”.

Small is not the word to describe the Reading Cinemas complex, an anchor property in the Courtenay Place entertainment precinct.

Workers are busy across the road at St James Theatre, where scaffolding and orange mesh around the exterior denote some progress. It’s set to open next year.

But at the Reading, which closed almost two and half years ago after being deemed potentially dangerous in an earthquake, there is silence, its cavernous food court and many cinemas now hidden behind an imposing wall of wood and posters.

There have been rumours of a new art-house cinema, luxury hotel, even a supermarket.

Illustration of the 80-unit oTTo apartment development in Te Aro, on the site of the earthquake-prone Commonsense Organics building.

Council records show resource consent was granted in 2015 to build a Countdown supermarket on the site of Reading’s Wakefield St car park.

Plans included a “wedge shape” profile on Wakefield St, a 67-space basement carpark and internal access to the “Reading Centre”.

Those appear to have been shelved after the Kaikōura quake a year later, after which Reading’s Tory St car park building had to be demolished.

But Reading and Countdown were given a five-year consent extension in June 2020, meaning that work might not be far away.

The Wellington Convention Centre is under construction and set to open in 2023. It is predicted to drive more people and investment into the city.

Countdown has confirmed the plans but Reading continues to say nothing about this development or any plans for inside its own building.

Mark Douglas, the global entertainment company’s managing director in Australia and New Zealand, had just two words: “No comment”.

Arcus said his members had been “concerned about Reading, [there’s] no clarity on a forward plan, it feels hollowed out, empty”.

Pannett said the council was in contact with the company, but “owners have to have the funding and the business case to get on with investment, and we can’t force them to do that”.

It appears the WCC is making decent progress on its own projects but has little power to push private building owners on theirs, especially the bigger players.

It was working with Local Government NZ and Auckland Council on a new loan scheme for other struggling properties, but “we have no regulatory powers to enforce until the (earthquake-prone) notice expires”.

“We do have advocacy powers, but hope that people will make investment.”

Pannett used the word “hope” frequently in discussing the levers available to local government.

Chris Parkin is a touch more optimistic. The QT Hotel owner and former city councillor is building a $25 million, 80-unit apartment complex around the corner, where the earthquake-prone Commonsense Organics building now stands.

Opening date is set down for late 2022. Parkin believed Reading had a plan, but was just waiting to set it in motion.

“That Reading site will almost inevitably have a hotel on it,” he said. “That’s what the owners have been planning…they are buying time to get it right.”

Chris Wilkinson, managing director of business development firm First Retail, agrees.

He said Reading was “looking for some clarity in the Wellington market”.

That greater clarity could come in the form of more movies being released post-Covid, a growing and more secure Wellington economy and a significant new building being opened around the corner.

“As we get closer to the opening of the Convention Centre, then we will likely see more regeneration in that whole precinct,” he said.

“Once we’ve got this new anchor in the area, driving business, driving people down there, there’s a high likelihood that the Convention Centre will radiate benefit, just like we are seeing up in Auckland at the moment, with the international convention centre.”

Parkin, too, could see a timely boost in the opening of Tākina and the expansion of post-pandemic travel bubbles.

“Projects like this in themselves are not economically justifiable, only justifiable because of the benefit overall they bring to the city.”

It’s a city crying out for that benefit, keen to leave behind the Walking Dead and make its way back to the land of the living.