Tapu Te Ranga marae rebuild waits on Wellington infrastructure woes
Monday, 28 April 2025
As Wellington enters its sixth winter since Tapu Te Ranga Marae burnt down, plans for up to 50 new homes have been revealed but it appears the city’s pipes are holding it back.
The fire on June 6, 2019, at the Island Bay marae was thought to have been started by a spark from a brazier. Twenty-eight Cub Scouts sleeping there that night fled into the pre-dawn morning and, as the ashes settled, multiple problems were found with the original marae and surrounding complex.
Nearly $100,000 was raised for a replacement in the immediate aftermath but the last word on actual work was in 2023, when Tapu Te Ranga trust board member Glenda Hughes said housing was planned. On Monday she said up to 50 homes were now planned for the site, with an initial 12 in the lower sections.
No financing had been yet found and it was recently discovered that crucial pipe work to allow housing was the responsibility of the Wellington City Council.
A submission from marae trustee Papuwai Porter-Samuels to the council’s long-term plan committee on Monday gives some more definitive plans.
The planned papakāinga (housing development on Māori land) would in phase one have 12 homes to replace “displaced and vulnerable tangata (people), many of whom contribute directly to the marae’s operation”.
“This will re-establish a community of care around the marae – a necessary step in returning to a living marae model.”
But the submission to the council reveals one of the big catches in the plan with Porter-Samuels saying that, to meet resource consent conditions, the existing council-owned waste water pipe needs to be replaced.
Wellington Water advice was that the existing pipe was nearing the end of its life due to a lack of maintenance, meaning the cost of replacing it fell to the council, “thereby facilitating the construction of these much-needed dwellings”.
The dire state of Wellington’s ageing pipes was little known in 2019, but they have been in the spotlight in the six years since via regular breakages and high-profile issues at Wellington Water, the council-owned entity charged with maintaining and running the region’s pipe network.
Porter-Samuels also called on the council to prioritise water, power and digital asset work for the site, which would eventually serve as an evacuation area for Island Bay and the south coast.
In the aftermath of the fire, the council could find only one consent on file for the marae complex and that was for a potting shed that was actually a three- bedroom house.
Warnings had been ringing at the council for decades about the unauthorised work. At the time the council signed off on the building being allowed to house 1000 people, the person listed as the owner and contact person was dead.
The main marae building had passed a fire audit, but the building was uninsured at the time of the fire. An online fundraising drive was started before the embers had been extinguished. 'We will rebuild,' said the Givealittle page, which gathered $98,990 in donations.
Donations included $250 from a Wellington High School fundraiser, $608 through a mufti day at Wellington East Girls' College, $125 from Island Bay Childcare, $414 from South Wellington Intermediate School, and the Moon Bar in Newtown raised $700 for the cause.