New museum will get support it needs - Clark
The Te Unua Museum of Southland project is running on schedule, on track to receive Green Star building status, and, so far, on budget.
Should budgeting issues arise, Invercargill mayor Nobby Clark said the council had contingencies in place to be “a wee bit flexible’’. And he issued a pledge during a site visit on Thursday: “If we need to pay more, we will definitely do that.”
The building would be serving an important function for 50 years, Clark said. “We need to get this right.” Replacing the Southland Museum and Art Gallery on the same Queens Park site, but with a significantly larger footprint, is a $71.5m project, for which $17m external funding is being sought.
Council programme director Lee Butcher said there were challenges for building projects “up and down the country’’.
“Are we going to face these challenges? Yes we are, absolutely,’’ he said.
But the council is ready to confront these with good planning and execution.
The existing building is now set for demolition, starting with the internal process of removing asbestos.
Butcher said he was “very, very confident’’ the new building would be New Zealand’s first Green Star museum.
Green Star performance measures for the construction and operation of buildings signify they have met international standards relating to such things as energy and water efficiency, healthy spaces, and responsible building practices.
For instance, the lumber from felled trees will be recycled and reused for the rebuild, as will bricks, and rubble will also be used for the car park.
The city councillor helming the museum rebuild, finance committee chairman Grant Dermody, said achieving Green Star standard would attract international attention. It will also help with central government funding.
The council is taking away the former museum’s associated function as an art gallery, and last week faced feedback from the arts community to provide firmer plans for a new venue for the arts.
Clark said there had been “not-healthy competition’’ by having both functions in the same building.
The fit-out of the new museum will be more engaging and less static than in the past, for instance with people able to use their cellphones to activate QR codes as opposed to just reading something on a wall or panel.
Clark stressed how rare it was for any council to have undertaken two massive projects at the same time, as the Invercargill City Council had done with inner-city redevelopment and the new museum – but the delivery of the inner-city project showed it could be done.
The museum rebuild itself is part of Project 1225, a three-part undertaking also comprising the now-completed Te Pātaka Taoka Southern Regional Collections Storage Facility in Tisbury, and the new Tuatarium under construction within Queens Park.