Wellington Construction corpses

The DomPost reported recently that Wellington Construction Ltd has bit the dust, owing various creditors money as it dissolved into a pile of construction rubble. We’re saddened by that, but its not completely unexpected: you run with wolves, you might just get bitten: although in this case its not really clear who is doing the biting. The saviour of Wellington football club Phoenix, our favourite spiky-haired developer Terry Serepisos has been hit by collateral damage - WCL were building Terry’s Century City development, leaving it in a state of limbo. Perhaps it may even have a a roll-on effect on the next Serepisos project in Dixon St. So, is this the start of the end of Wellington’s construction boom, or is it completely unrelated? 

Maybe we just leave you to make your own mind up. Terry Pinfold, the head of WCL, was an experienced contractor: 

“Pinfold made his name as commercial manager for Mainzeal in the 1990s when he was associated with projects such as moving the Museum Hotel, refurbishing the St James Theatre and building the Moa Point sewage treatment plant. In 1998 he set up the Wellington office of Auckland-based Hartner Construction. When Hartner went into liquidation in 2001,

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Jolly Green Giants

In a break away from discussing the whys and wherefores of a proposed small road to the north of Wellington, lets return for a moment to the heart of the city to present and discuss a building proposal by The Wellington Company. 

The building, designed by local architects Architecture +, is proposed as the new home for Telecom in Wellington, as reported by NBR and the DomPost earlier this week, although in typical non-helpful fashion, neither acknowledged who the architect was.

Also being marketed recently are glassy new proposals situated between Lambton Quay and Kate Sheppard Place, just next to the bus-station,  which are an update on a previous scheme, by the same architects, as originally reported almost a year ago by WellUrban. Some hillside dwellers aren’t going to be getting much sleep if all these projects come off… 

Telecom have been on the hunt for some time for a new base in the capital, to concentrate their staff - at present distributed in several buildings around Wellington, including on Jervois Quay and also in Tory St. Those avid property watchers amongst us will have noticed that Ian Cassells, head of the Wellington Company, bought the

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Boondoggle Gully

Following on from our recent post dissing the likelihood of the “Transmission Gully” project ever getting off the ground, Transit made a big splash with a 4 page advert in the local rag (sorry DomPost, but your quality has been on a solid downwards trajectory lately and you no longer deserve the epithet of national newspaper), setting out improvements: a “new route” (which seems to be “using the gully floor” instead of “half way up the bottom of a steep slope”), a reduction in the number of intersections, and a confirmation that it would be 4 lanes (ie 2 lanes each way). Somehow from that there is a saving of over $235 million, certainly nothing to be sneezed at. Why, that would get you one and a half new light rail systems (a relative snip at $140 million) in central Wellington, right there! And there’s the rub: Mayor Kerry is quoted on the front page as saying that Transmission Gully was still in Never-Never Land, and that unless central government stumps up with another $600 million, it isn’t going to go ahead. It’s worth noting that the definition of boondoggle not only includes: work or activity that …

Dude, where’s my gas station?

There’s something curious going on in Wellington at present, with a reduction in the number of gas stations going on. Perhaps it is not something to be too upset about, and maybe it is just the start of a well deserved end to an urban design form of none too exciting character, but there seems to be a distinct inclination to demolish old gas stations, and not commission new ones. Is this the start of a new urban phenomenom? Being an urban soul who doesn’t venture far into the horrors of the suburbs, I understand from far flung friends in fairer fields that gas stations line the routes home to suburbs like uh, north, and south. Who knows, perhaps even east and west have them too.But in the city, like corner dairies in the foothills of the Hutt Valley, gas stations are shutting up their central city doors and not coming back. Oh sure, its no big deal perhaps, and there are still 2 or 3 central city sites belonging to BP and Shell which obviously chew up a fair bit of the petrol being pumped out to Wellington’s commuters, but it seems that most of the sites are relocating …

Wagamama joins Mojo at Kumutoto

In what appears to be one of Wellington’s more anticipated restaurant openings for years, a branch of the international noodle bar Wagamama has opened in the Meridian building, and already queues are forming out the door: indeed, breaking all Australasian records for turnover in a first week, despite it being the middle of a very bleak winter. It evidently has been a phenomenal success.   This is the first (and probably will be the only) branch of Wagamama to open in Wellington - there are already two or three in Auckland, although the chain itself started in London a couple of decades ago and has been spreading steadily across the world, exhalting its values of positive eating and positive living. The mantra of good design has always been strong at Wagamama, courtesy of Alan Yau, who got David Chipperfield to design his first, Bloomsbury branch of Waga’s in the early 90s, and followed that up with John Pawson to design the branch in Wardour St in Soho (London).  Here, the fitout, by Christchurch based designers Element 17, also follows the Wagamama guidelines - the space is tall, and largely unadorned, with the solid oak refractory style tables  so …