Bill mounts for blunder at museum
It has been four years since Napier’s new museum was found to be much too small and there is still no permanent home on the horizon for the region’s collection of artefacts worth tens of millions of dollars.
Napier ratepayers will continue footing a bill of $12,500 a month to store the collection at a temporary site for the foreseeable future.
The $18 million MTG HB building, opened in September 2013, was built to house the $44m collection of about 100,000 objects owned by the Hawke’s Bay Museums Trust.
The building, owned by the Napier City Council, replaced an old building on the same site. When it was finished, it was found capable of holding just 40 per cent of the collection because air conditioning ducts and other pipes were taking up more room than expected in its basement storage area.
The rest of the collection has been stored in the old Rothmans building in Ahuriri, at a cost to Napier ratepayers of about $12,500 a month.
This week, council director of community services Antoinette Campbell said ‘‘further options have been explored, including multiple sites in Onekawa and one in Whakatu. However, due to costs and competing priorities nothing has been confirmed as suitable to date.’’
The sites would not be disclosed for commercial reasons, she said.
Campbell said the collection could stay in the Rothmans building as long as required, and the buildings owners had no plans involving the space they occupy.
Last October the council said it was 6-9 months from making a decision on where the collection would be housed. Once a site is found it will take about 18 months to complete any work on the site and relocate the collection.