Could this be the end of the Golden Mile for Wellington?
Thursday, 14 August 2025
Wellington City Council’s outgoing transport and infrastructure manager, Brad Singh, has given one final briefing on the city’s most controversial project - the Golden Mile.
Work on the first stage of the plan, at the Cambridge Terrace intersection, is well underway. But the contract for the second stage, which would run down Courtenay Place to Taranaki Street, is still unsigned.
“At this stage, we will be anticipating that the contract - all going well - will be signed in November of this year,” Singh said.
His comment left a gaping elephant in the room - the election. With Tory Whanau no longer in the running for re-election as mayor, there is no certainty that a new mayor would support signing the contract.
Speaking to Stuff in April, mayoral candidate Andrew Little warned the current council against signing a contract before the election.
“I think that the Golden Mile project has the potential to be incredibly disruptive at a time when business conditions are very fragile. I think we just need to hold off until there's confidence restored in the city,” he said at the time.
Commenting on Thursday, he said he has always been supportive of the project, but has concerns that the $139.4m budget (49% of which is funded by the council) would blow out.
“If elected in October I’ll want to run my ruler over the budgets and the construction work programme. I’ll also need to receive assurances that there are strong safeguards in place to protect ratepayers against future cost blowouts,” he said.
“But today’s briefing is a good sign we will soon be in a position to push ahead on Courtenay Place and start the work of revitalising our city centre.”
Meanwhile Diane Calvert, an incumbent councillor and mayoral candidate, told Stuff she would halt the second stage until the city had a fully integrated transport plan.
“Ratepayers have just been hit with an $83m cost blowout on the sludge project. We cannot keep signing off on major works without knowing the full risks and costs. That means getting the numbers right first, not after the bill arrives,” she said.
Ray Chung, Rob Goulden, Kelvin Hastie and Karl Tiefenbacher have all previously said they either don’t support, or would want to push pause on, the project.
Budget already blew out, prompting re-engineering of designs
Singh, who has resigned from the council, offered elected members his final reflections on the Golden Mile project.
“I think it is important when you are dealing with construction of big scale infrastructure like this, that you plan slow and build fast,” he said.
He said councillors may not have known at the time, but the designs that Wellington City Council took over from Let’s Get Wellington Moving in late 2023 were only 60% complete.
“If the council was aware at that time that what they were locking themselves into was a budget that wasn’t fully formed… you might have made a different decision,” he said.
Council officers completed the designs in 2024, but costing in February showed they were $20m over the budget. Work to re-engineer parts of the project have likely brought plans back into budget, he said, a move that Andrew Little called “promising”.
Work would start in 2026
Under the current plan, work would begin on the northern side of Courtenay Place in 2026, between Cambridge Terrace and Tory Street.
Construction would proceed down to Taranaki Street from there, before repeating on the southern side of the road.
Final sealing would be expected in 2029.
Meanwhile construction on the first stage of the project - the Kent and Cambridge Terrace intersection - is well underway. Most of the work underground is complete, and things will start to look different above ground shortly, Singh confirmed.
Contractors did find a “void” underground, he told councillors, describing an 5m by 3m by 0.5m “empty cavity”. That was dealt with within the project’s budget.