Council considers new waterfront offices in secret

Friday, 24 November 2023

The Datacom building was considered by the council as a future office space option in a secret meeting on Thursday.

A potential multimillion-dollar move to waterfront offices has been mooted by the Wellington City Council in a behind-closed-doors meeting.

The Post understands the council is considering renting up to 16,000m² of space in Datacom House – overlooking Waterloo Quay – which is being vacated by Datacom at the end of the year.

Councillors voted unanimously to exclude the public from their discussions on “Future Council Accommodation” alongside the “Waterfront Precinct” ‒ understood to be about the future of council-owned properties on the waterfront.

Councillors had visited the building on Wednesday afternoon to have a look at the possible future home of the council.

Ben McNulty admired the office building’s view over Wellington’s sunny waterfront, in a post on social media platform X (formerly Twitter).

A source said the fit-out cost for the space would be at least $20 million at a market rate, similar to what the council paid when it moved to The Terrace in 2017.

The other option in the long term was renting space in the new Willis Bond development on the Michael Fowler Centre car park, which has not yet started construction.

The view from the planned 110 Jervois Quay development in Wellington, which is proposed for the carpark next to the Michael Fowler Centre. Artist’s impression provided by Willis Bond.

Diane Calvert was the only councillor to question whether some of the information about “Future Council Accommodation” should be made public.

“We’ve talked about this before, whether some of our papers should be public in part to ensure greater transparency of what we’re doing,” she said in the meeting.

Last week council staff and mayor Tory Whanau said the council was following best practice when holding secret meetings, but councillors disagreed and said more information could be made public.

The Willis Bond development was thrown into uncertainty at the start of the year when the wrong address was used to notify the resource consent, sending the consenting process back to square one. Construction has not started.

Victoria University of Wellington subsequently announced it would no longer take up office space in the building to form part of the beleaguered National Music Centre.