Library reopens after $2.5m of quake strengthening work and repairs
A steady stream of people entered Nelson’s Elma Turner Library on Wednesday as the building was officially reopened – 19 months after being closed over safety concerns.
Lorna Johnston and her two children, aged 6 and 8, were among those happy to have access to the whole building again, following the completion of earthquake strengthening and repairs.
“It’s quite exciting, especially because we’ve still got a couple weeks left of the school holidays.”
Nelson mayor Nick Smith thanked library staff and users for their tolerance and said he was proud to reopen the fully repaired library “under budget and a month ahead of schedule”.
The $2.5 million total cost of the project was “good economics”, having extended the life of the current library by another 5-10 years, he said.
The Elma Turner Library – the city’s main library on Halifax St – was shut in June 2022 after the discovery of heavy tiles in its ceiling that posed an earthquake quake risk.
The ceiling grid of some parts of the building was found to be under the 34% threshold of the New Build Standard (NBS).
While the northern and central parts of the building next to the Maitai River were reopened in stages after repairs last year (extending a small pop-up space) the opening of the southern end was delayed.
The southern section was due to be reopened in July, but roof trusses there were found to be damaged, pushing out the estimated opening date to February 2024, and increasing the estimated cost of the repairs from $1.4m to $2.7m.
Having to repair the trusses turned out to be a “blessing”, as it fixed problems with
“It’s just amazing ... to be able to focus all our attention on to providing services to the community.”
Kate Miller, libraries manager
leaking in the roof, Smith said. The building now met 67% NBS for the ceilings, and 34% NBS for the structure, meaning it was no longer quake prone, he said.
“The alternative was to build a brand new library at an expense of $46m, and where council’s got a gross cost of ... about $60m for the storm recovery costs, high interest rates, I think we’ve made the wise economic choice.”
But the council was “going to need, long term, to find a new building,” Smith said.
Building a new facility was probably the most likely solution, he said.
The council was due to release a report in March that outlined an “initial scoping study which will give us some options”.
It wouldn’t talk about specific sites, rather what a modern library for Nelson would look like, he said.
The purpose of libraries was changing, with the “long-term future of library services ... looking [like] more of a community hub with greater use of technology, and so it will be a different sort of building for the long term,” he said.
“The key thing for me is to make sure we take our community with us.
“We’ve now got a good window ... to carefully work through those issues.”
In the newly opened part of the Elma Turner Library, several steel columns supported the repaired trusses and there were more places across the library to sit and plug in personal devices, or sit around tables.
The library was closed for nine days while staff prepared the space for reopening on Wednesday, which included moving 70,000 books and 1500 shelves.
Libraries manager Kate Miller thanked the community for their support and resilience during the project, which ”felt like it would never end, in some ways”.
“It’s just amazing ... to be able to focus all our attention on to providing services to the community. We’re just so happy to see that there are more spaces ... to meet, to learn, to create, and of course there are more physical collections out on the floor.”