Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
Te Tātoru o Wairau
What now for the properties bought for scrapped rebuild?
The Ministry of Education has yet to decide what it will do with five houses it bought in Marlborough as part of Te Tātoru o Wairau.
It bought the properties with the “intention of demolishing them”.
But before it could, the project – which would have seen three new schools built in Blenheim – was paused, and then pulled.
In February, Education Minister Erica Stanford revealed Te Tātoru o Wairau had been scrapped amid a massive cost blowout. It had a budget of $170 million, but the cost was set to come in at $400m.
The project, talked about for more than a decade, would have seen the co-location of Marlborough Boys’ and Marlborough Girls’ colleges on McLauchlan St. For that to happen, Bohally Intermediate, currently beside the girls’ college on McLauchlan St, was going to move to College Park.
“The ministry purchased the five properties for the co-location project, with the intention of demolishing them and incorporating them into the school sites,” Sam Fowler, the ministry’s head of property,
infrastructure and digital, said. The five properties were now part of the ministry’s nationwide residential property portfolio, Fowler said.
Three of the properties had been tenanted to teachers and other school staff. The other two properties were vacant because they needed investment to bring them to a “tenantable standard”, Fowler said. “Generally, residential properties that are rented out by the ministry are offered to school staff initially and, if no prospective tenants are found, they are advertised publicly.”
The ministry negotiated the purchase of the properties by mutual agreement with the landowners, Fowler said. The negotiated purchase price for the properties was agreed based on the current market value.
However, under the Public Works Act 1981, landowners were entitled to various “compensations”, on top of the market value, when the Crown needed their property.
A “guide for landowners”, compiled by Land Information New Zealand, showed people could get an extra $50,000 for “acquisitions that include the landowners’ home” or $25,000 if the property was bare land, or not the landowners’ home – in other words a rental.
People could also get lawyers’ fees, valuation costs and moving costs reimbursed under the act.
Fowler said these added entitlements were called “disturbance payments”. These were included in the overall purchase cost of just under $4m for the five properties, he said. The Redwood St property was bought to improve access to College Park and to provide space for stormwater infrastructure, Fowler said.
The ministry looked at the Seymour Kindergarten site, because it was land owned by the ministry, but it would have disrupted the operation of the kindergarten and was “not viable to meet stormwater requirements”, he said.
The ministry did not approach any other landowners next to College Park regarding buying their properties.
Education Minister Erica Stanford revealed Te Tātoru o Wairau had been scrapped amid a massive cost blow-out. It had a budget of $170 million, but the cost was set to come in at $400m.