Negotiations hold up $40m Wellington City Council move

Thursday, 27 February 2025

The Datacom building on Jervois Quay, which the council will move into months later than expected.

The Wellington City Council’s move to new digs has been delayed by months due to issues with negotiations.

When council staff do move in – now at the end of 2025 rather than the planned start of 2025 – they will overlook an assortment of big ratepayer spends, headaches and a major cost blow-out that have dominated much of this council term.

Last May the council confirmed it was moving from its temporary base on The Terrace to the Datacom building on Jervois Quay with the fit-out due to be completed at the end of 2024, and staff starting to move in at the beginning of 2025 with a $40m budget.

The new council offices will look over a number of headache council assets including the City to Sea Bridge, Town Hall and library - all of which are in this photo. The pink council building and one to its left are now being demolished.

Council spokesperson Richard MacLean on Wednesday confirmed that the council was yet to start its fit-out but, so far, $2.46m had been spent on the project. That spending was on the initial design, figuring out who would sit where in the new building, what was needed, tendering and interior design.

The landlord was now finalising the base fit-out with the plan to hand the building to the council in June. The council now planned to move into the building at the end of 2025 with the delay blamed on negotiations taking “longer than expected”.

The new building would be publicly accessible with rooms for meetings and a public reception area, he said.

Roger and Maria Calkin, whose son Sandy died after falling off Wellington wharves, heard that the council was fencing the waterfront during the coroner’s hearing.

Council chief operating officer James Roberts said the landlord was providing the building “base only”, meaning the council had to do a complete custom fit-out.

This included earthquake-strengthening and “life-cycle upgrading of building services”. He said this was the reason for the delay. Much of the previous office fit-out was being re-used, he said.

It consolidated the council into a single building, as opposed to being spread out across several sites, and gave it up to 30 years of certainty, he said.

The new offices will be a stone’s throw from the council-owned Town Hall, which has had a $147m cost blow-out to strengthen. It was meant to reopen in 2023 but is now not scheduled to open until 2027.

They will overlook the City to Sea bridge, which the council wanted to demolish because it was cheaper than fixing. There is a pause on work ‒ forced by legal action to save the bridge.

They are also part of the same precinct where the council’s central library is getting a $187.5m rebuild, and two quake-prone council buildings are being demolished.

Out the other windows of the new council digs is Frank Kitts Park, which has long been talked about for an upgrade that remains uncertain. And beyond the park is a waterfront the council promised – during a coroner’s hearing into a man who fell to his death there – to fence but then had to revisit when the cost came in higher than expected.

Councillor Diane Calvert said councillors looked forward to the new office but the council had to be mindful of not having another cost blow out like the Town Hall.

'Council must be willing to learn from past mistakes and not repeat them,“ she said.

“After all, it’s ratepayers’ money being spent.”

Mayor Tory Whanau was approached for comment.