Wellington Central Library: From Paralysis to a $ 179 Million Solution

ANALYSIS:

The closure of Wellington’s central library fuels a growing narrative that the capital’s public infrastructure no longer meets the city’s needs.

It’s a story that has only gotten progressively worse for Wellington City Council.

When the library closed its doors in March of last year, the sorry state of the underground pipes had not yet materialized.

Today, city councilors agreed on a solution to fix the library more than 18 months after it became a problem.

They have agreed to strengthen the building at a cost of up to $ 179 million, which is possibly the most important decision they will make this year.

But it took about a year to get to this point.

There is a sense that the council went into a state of paralysis when the building closed, in part due to the scale of the decision.

Mayor Justin Lester left CEO Kevin Lavery in front of the media, who were sitting around one of the tables in the now-closed City Office building.

But Lavery was ending up as head of the council that year and there was uncertainty about who would take over.

The local body elections in October also didn’t help move forward because the library became something to campaign about, rather than something to make decisions about.

The election result also led to the dramatic removal of Justin Lester, meaning that new Mayor Andy Foster needed time to lie down.

By the time 2020 rolled around, it was just another year before the Long Term Plan was available for review again.

But more than one councilman around the table had strong feelings that more imminent action was required.

Basically, a deal was struck where a significant amount of operational funds were spent to prepare the project for the swords to hit the ground when capex was signed in 2021.

The regeneration of the Civic Plaza had previously been considered a master plan, but it was decided that a building described as the living room of the city could not wait for that.

The wait would likely have been long, considering that as of August this year the council was still wrestling with its insurers over the fate of the Civic Administration Building.

So the library was framed as a kind of anchor building in the Civic Square, like the City Hall and the City Gallery.

The only thing the council quickly moved on was the pop-up library branches around the city to ensure that service continued.

Seasoned councilor Iona Pannett once joked at a press conference that she had never seen something done so quickly in local government.

But for the new councilors, and there are some of them, it was difficult to deal with the pace of the local government.

It’s safe to say that your perception of time has changed dramatically after a year on the job.

It’s a big decision to spend almost $ 180 million to fortify a building so that it can exist with a bunch of closed buildings in the cemetery that is Civic Square.

The reality is that people care about the library, much less where the city council has its offices.

Although, taxpayers would certainly have realized the more than $ 3.6 million Wellington City Council is spending on rent for every year that it cannot return to its offices in Civic Square.

There is some appetite around the council table for commercial space on the ground floors of these civic buildings to help pay for the costly strengthening costs.

But the idea that the library could be sold to a developer and rented out was explicitly dropped.

The very idea of ​​privatizing the library turned some councilors green.

By the time meat was put on bones looking for options to spruce up the library, there was a clear choice.

Strengthen the earthquake or build new?

Wellington has a history of dragging architecture through the courts and the legal risk that came with the library’s fate was real, not to mention that it is a building that Sir Ian Athfield designed.

The heritage issue tends to bring out the loudest voices in Wellington.

So the fruits of the consultation caught some councilors by surprise, because more respondents were not worried about saving the library.

They just wanted a sturdy new building that wouldn’t cost the land.

Some councilors felt the library query was a bit over the top, but others weren’t convinced that the council’s standard query went far enough.

Wellington City Council also conducted a representative survey to ensure that everyone’s voices were captured, not just those who proactively put pen to paper in a presentation.

The result of the survey ended up being more or less the same as the consultation, which was a narrow division between new construction and the option of high resilience strengthening.

The original cost of that booster was $ 200 million and it was more expensive than building a new one.

But the library project was run differently from others the council had previously managed.

A group of experts was instructed to continue detailed design work in parallel with the council processes.

It meant that when the consultation ended, the costs of each option had been further reviewed.

It turned out that the high resilience strengthening option was going to cost less, up to $ 179 million, and a new construction was expected to cost more, up to 183 million.

It meant that saving a building would no longer cost tens of millions of dollars more, but would cost roughly the same as building a new one.

It’s not costs that the public was asked about, but councilors were confident they could go ahead and vote on a decision because cost was a key factor in getting people to favor new construction.

The biggest question around costs is whether the estimates that councilors had in front of them today can be trusted.

You don’t have to look too far across Civic Square to see what a budget-strengthening earthquake looks like. The City Council is the perfect example of this.

But the group of experts working on the detailed design of the library has architects, engineers and construction consultants in the same room at the same time.

Councilors close to the project feel that all the work that can be done has been done.

They know that the only thing that will drive prices up for sure is that it will take longer to get the shovels on the ground.