A bit like a bike helmet An uncertain future

A year after the Kaiko¯ura earthquake, the future of a number of major Wellington buildings remains in doubt, and one of the key public safety issues is far from resolved, writes Hamish Rutherford.

On the same day that Wellington was shaken violently awake a year ago, BNZ was confident its huge waterfront building, used by roughly 1100 staff, would not be empty for long.

The $100 million Harbour Quays building, the flagship of CentrePort’s drive into commercial property in the 2000s, had been closed for months after the 2013 earthquake.

But even before the capital’s central business district reopened after 2016’s 7.8 magnitude earthquake, BNZ said its landlord had confirmed it was ‘‘structurally sound’’.

There was some broken glass and fallen plasterboard, but the fix was just a clean-up. ‘‘We’re not expecting that our people will be back in the building this week,’’ a spokeswoman said.

Within days, the company had changed its line to say a return to the building could take months, as the damage ‘‘sort of unfolded’’. By then it had emerged that parts of the nearby Statistics House had collapsed, and newly discovered damage was causing fresh building evacuations almost by the day.

Still BNZ insisted it was going back in.

A year on, the building still lies empty, with little sign of activity, but the story remains the same.

The building’s owners cannot say whether it will ever be repaired.

‘‘It’s up in the air, because we’re still working with our insurers with respect to the claim,’’ CentrePort finance director Kieran Sweetman says.

BNZ has even signed a lease elsewhere in the city, to reunite staff currently scattered across several buildings.

But even last week, a spokeswoman confirmed the official position is BNZ will return to Harbour Quays.

BNZ is not the only major organisation in this position; Wellington City Council was similarly caught out.

In the days after the 2016 earthquake, the council played down the significance of damage to its distinctive pink civic administration building in Civic Square.

A year on, the building remains empty, with a repair bill expected to reach $30m. That is if the building – which was earmarked for a significant refurbishment – is repaired at all, rather than pulled down.

Uncertainty hangs over other buildings.

Greater Wellington Regional Council’s former headquarters in Wakefield St are empty, as is the nearby James Cook car park, which adjoins the Amora Hotel, which itself is closed for lengthy repairs.

As well as a group of buildings that have been pulled down because of damage, and more being repaired, buildings which collectively housed thousands of Wellington workers lie empty, often because of arguments about whether they should be torn down or repaired.

A report by commercial real estate firm Colliers in August estimated 100,000 square metres of office space was out of action, enough to house about 7000 workers.

Property sources say in this situation building owners tend to insist they want to rebuild, and tenants must publicly support landlords, even when they want the exact opposite.

‘‘There’s very complex negotiations under way between the owners, the insurers and the tenants over what the future of the buildings might be,’’ says Derek Baxter, Wellington City Council’s building intelligence manager.

Baxter plays no role in the negotiations, but says examples seen in Christchurch suggest the situation may not be resolved any time soon.

‘‘It could go on for years to come.’’

The damage and uncertainty partly comes down to circumstance, with the quake having a particularly violent impact around the port and some areas close to the water.

Such were the forces exerted on Statistics House that concrete beams stretched, causing two parts of the building to collapse.

An inquiry into another roughly 80 buildings with similar characteristics uncovered previously hidden damage in almost half of the buildings.

Armed with a knowledge of what had happened to Statistics House, Baxter was ‘‘not surprised by finding damage, but surprised by the extent [of damage] in buildings previously cleared to reopen’’.

The capital’s building stock may not be as good as it could be because, unlike in some other seismically active areas, New Zealanders are able to insure buildings. This means money can be used to mitigate risk.

Rather than focus on genuinely resilient buildings, New Zealand used reinforced concrete in a bigger way than other places, from the 1970s into the 2000s.

The future of roughly 150 reinforced concrete buildings around the capital is less secure – while not actually deemed to be a risk – than it was before.

The council has said it will not allow buildings with seismic ratings below 67 per cent to be converted into apartments, while universities are demanding even higher standards, reducing options for developers.

‘‘What you’ve got is a more flexible building, that can cope with the earthquake forces, but it’s a bit like a bike helmet. One crash, and you’ve got to replace it,’’ Baxter says.

Base isolation systems, flexible bearings or pads that isolate a building from the ground beneath and cut the seismic forces in an earthquake, were invented here, but had been used relatively rarely until recently.

Since the earthquake, however, and the passing of the new Health and Safety Act, the strength of buildings has become ‘‘an envy advertisement’’ for landlords.

Senior executives – who are now liable for the health and safety of their employees – treat the issue much more seriously.

As well as those displaced by damage to buildings, the Kaiko¯ ura earthquake has prompted a rush to top-quality buildings that are not only designed to preserve life, but to prevent disruption, a trade-off more landlords are now willing to make. This has had a sudden impact on the amount of office space available in Wellington.

‘‘Right now, at least for the time being, you’d have to say, the inn is full,’’ says John Milford, chief executive of the Wellington Chamber of Commerce, adding, however, that the impact would be temporary.

Not only are landlords enjoying strong returns in the capital, boosting the prospect of new developments, but projects under development would start coming onstream from early 2018, helping ease the shortage.

Milford concedes it’s not ideal that employers wanting to move to Wellington might not be able to find quality office.

‘‘But compare what’s happening here to what is happening in Christchurch’’, where employers were forced to set up shop outside the city centre, and many are yet to return.

‘‘That hasn’t happened here. People have stayed in the city.’’

A stronger culture of safety at work has not eliminated what has long been seen as the biggest risk to safety in Wellington, or even changed the way people behave day to day.

‘‘People will leave the health and safety meeting in the office, where they talk about the upgrade of the building, and then put themselves at greater personal risk by walking into a red-stickered restaurant because they’re the cheapest or best noodles in town,’’ Baxter says. ‘‘Very, very quickly we forget.’’

A year to repair

While some surprisingly modern commercial buildings are closed as a result of earthquake damage, the council is confident these do not represent a public safety issue. The same cannot be said about a safety issue that Wellingtonians knew about long before November

14. Behind the CTV building, unreinforced masonry was the biggest killer in the Christchurch earthquake, responsible for 39 deaths.

The Kaiko¯ ura earthquake, to the surprise of some, did not see bricks falling in

Cuba St or other popular spots in the area, but the Government moved swiftly in a bid to resolve the issue. In the wake of the quake, the owners of about 250 buildings were given until March 2018 to undertake repairs, including to more than 100 deemed risky because of unreinforced masonry.

The problem is, there are few obvious signs of progress. The number of buildings with masonry issues has been revised to 96, but with five months to go, none of these have been repaired.

About two-thirds of the building owners are engaging with the council and doing their best to remedy the situation, even though many are individual owners or family trusts, with limited financial resources or the wherewithal to manage the project.

For the remainder, it is worse; the council is confronted with landlords with whom, for a variety of reasons, it cannot properly engage.

‘‘There are language issues. Overseas owners. Some are hard to contact, some simply have their head in their sand. Unashamedly, we’ll come down pretty hard,’’ Baxter says.

The council has approved plans for financial assistance to the owners – using targeted rates as a kind of loan – but Baxter warns that when the deadline comes, behind the current carrot approach, the organisation has sticks. This could include cordons, or even the council physically stepping in to do the work itself.

‘‘We’re looking at everything we can possibly do. We’re still double the seismic risk to normal. We’ve got to get on top of this.’’

Milford says while the chamber has sympathy for the difficulties faced by some of the landlords, who may face financial pressure as well as the ‘‘ambitious’’ timetable, public safety had to be addressed as quickly as possible.

‘‘The work has to be completed, and what we have to do is find a way of expediting it.’’