Hospital build problems won’t go away in a hurry

I HAVE been grinding my teeth in frustration since the location of the new hospital rebuild was announced.

I believed that the existing Wakari site should have been chosen based on logic and common sense, two factors that I suspect have been overridden by political pressure.

The chosen site in the city centre is on unstable and future floodprone land, had to be purchased (wouldn’t it have been nice if Mondelez had shown some largesse after scuppering one of Dunedin’s economic and social institutions?), requires purchase, compensation and relocation of existing businesses and institutions, is adjacent to two major arterial roads, and will cause unprecedented disruption to traffic flow to those beleaguered motorists travelling within and through Dunedin.

Almost daily, we are getting reports of the problems (read: increased build time and cost) of choosing this particular site. I would anticipate that similar issues will keep the front pages of the ODT filled for some time.

The Wakari site offered acres of land already owned (and underutilised) by the Southern District Health Board, a comparatively stable geotechnical building ‘‘base’’ and one that would allow this mega build to be constructed with minimal disruption to our citizens. Additionally, this site would have offered relaxing views and potential landscaped grounds for recovering patients, ample parking space for all staff and visitors, and a safe helicopter landing pad at ground level compared with the manystoreyed one high above a busy city centre.

To offset the location, and very much in line with our council’s transport strategy, a frequent and regular bus service could be established, particularly tailored to the needs of the university staff and students who are an integral component of our ‘‘teaching’’ hospital.

The decision on the location of the new hospital does not appear to have been made on pragmatic factors as outlined above. I can only assume that stronger political and institutional forces have intervened, and along with subsequent ‘‘spin doctoring’’ have attempted to convince the general public of the wisdom of the decision.

Are we going to be subjected to yet more bureaucratic and managerial incompetence of which we have been subjected to so much in the recent past as the present build site progresses? I suspect so. Douglas Clark

Opoho

WHILE the details and designs are wrestled with for the new hospital, how about opening up the former warehouse as a temporary car park to alleviate the shortage of parking in the area?

It might be a good idea to make a parking building the first part of the new build. I’d expect it to be well patronised well before the hospital is completed. David McLeod

Abbotsford

Navigating grief

PIKE River, a lost and found submarine, a town called Paradise, Malaysian Airlines, world wars — your features in the Weekend Mix do well to tread these paths.

When they go into the Pike River mine, will there be ‘‘closure?’’ Whatever those families experience, it won’t be like anything they’ve imagined over the past eight years or so. Nothing like it.

I think grief is a shape shifter and its parameters infinite. That’s why we have to navigate our own grief, finished or unfinished, open or closed.

None of the Pike River families would say they’ve ‘‘won’’ now that the reentry is within their sights. That fight is about many things other than grief. Corporate responsibility, honesty and lies, industry vulnerability and hollow, abdicated leadership.

‘‘Finding’’ their loved ones’ remains won’t change that, and their grief will take on yet another hue. Or will it? With grief, a body or no body, you just don’t know. Liz Benny Middlemarch