“Entities failed in their duty”

“I was appalled to read your article about Wellington’s rotting wharf piles and the potential demand on ratepayers to meet the multimillion-dollar cost of repairs. What’s even worse is that the council knew nine years ago that urgent repairs were required.
Yet, at the flick of a pen, it has committed many millions to the proposed Kilbirnie sports centre project. Though I don’t oppose the project per se, I’ve always questioned the wisdom of committing this sum toward a loss-making facility in these difficult economic times, but not putting money toward the wharves’ repiling.
The council and the waterfront company seem to have been loath to allocate funding over the past decade, hoping a fairy godmother would come along to buy up the wharf properties and that she would do the repairs as part of the package.
It’s astonishing that the council and related waterfront company seem to have failed in their duty to maintain the unsafe wharves’ structures in question.
No worry, just sock the ratepayers an extra few hundred each each year to cover the repairs. We’re all swimming in surplus money.
VRYN EVANS
Newlands [abridged]

Look, I’m hardly what you’d call a heritage fundamentalist, and can often see that there are times when old buildings might have to make way for good new buildings that fit current and future needs. But I can also see that visible connections to history are very important, and heritage values go far beyond just recognising the twiddly details on pretty old buildings: the ICOMOS charter recognises aesthetic, historic, scientific and social value. We’ve tended to neglect our industrial and infrastructural heritage: just because something is “functional” doesn’t mean it is valueless, and just because your own memory only goes back as far as indoor netball it doesn’t mean that the connections to immigration, maritime commerce and wartime deployments aren’t significant and worth considering.

I find it curious that wharves that were built for entirely functional reasons are protected 150 years for aesthetic or heritage reasons. Wellington’s wharves grew to meet the growing needs of the marine traffic and now that we have very little such traffic, we become obsessed about whether to repair them in timber or concrete. If they have little sentimental value (particularly the outer T which for the majority can only bring memories of indoor netball or a helicopter ride they once took) and less historical value (exactly what did tie up here and who can remember it?) pull it down, change it, develop it and make it a vital part of the waterfront. Instead of trying to find a commerciall use that “fits” the outer T we should be investigating the shape of a new wharf that would give the best commercial return balanced with the best public use.

In which case, why shouldn’t we build new “wharves” (ie. piled structures jutting out in to the harbour on which structures could be built)? The water would have to be sufficiently shallow. Sinking the ugly and bizarre tugboat restaurant and replacing it with a building pushing out in to the harbour would be a vast improvement, IMHO.

Knock it down and start again fix the ridiculous traffic problem with cars and taxis still pissing us all off.

That means the outer T will need to be rebuilt. Longer, stronger, better. We can rebuild it. We have the technology. We have the expertise.

The article goes on to suggest that restoration (ala jackets) will only set us back $5.3million ($3.5million of which needs to be spent on the project rather urgently). Of course, if a decent structure is to be built on any of the wharves, then these figures would be substantially higher – I wonder if Kerry’s alarmism was ‘inspired’ by the costings for the proposed ‘Hilton wharf’ strengthening rather than the much smaller costs of refurbishing the wharves to carry their current loads…?

My original point still stands – with respect to wharves for new developments at least – building exciting new ones that actually match the exciting new buildings that they will in effect be part of will actually be more cost effective – and will have little effect on heritage values (unless you consider the preservation of the timber members – encased in concrete – as a suitable strategy for preserving heritage).

Anyway, for those heritagists among us, what can be of more heritage value than letting them rot and fall into the harbour at various rates of decay? – it will be beautifully picturesque at least…