Reprieve for City Garden as tower ‘not dangerous’

Residents of a downtown apartment building deemed unsafe will not need to leave their homes on Monday after experts found the 16-storey tower was “no longer dangerous”, Auckland Council building consents general manager Ian McCormick says.

City Garden Apartments’ tower in central Auckland was issued a Dangerous Building Notice on Wednesday after council building inspectors and Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Fenz) found significant defects with fire safety systems in the building.

Residents of the 199-apartment block at 76 Albert St were told they’d need to be out of their apartments by noon Monday.

But McCormick confirmed yesterday afternoon that would no longer need to happen after he and 15 building inspectors, with Fenz specialists, assessed that the concerns that led to the notice had been fixed.

“We are pleased to say that good progress has been made and based on our observations we believe the building is no longer dangerous.”

The owners were able to show “crucial life-saving systems” including alarms, sprinklers, smoke and heat protectors and fire doors were all working compliantly, he said.

The council expected certification documentation to be finished soon and it could then tell residents they won’t need to leave on Monday.

Tim Rainey, lawyer for City Garden Apartments’ body corporate, has applied to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) to have the dangerous building notice suspended, a process that can take up to 10 days under The Building Act.

“However . . . this will not affect the fact that residents do not need to vacate,” McCormick said.

Yesterday’s outcome was a good one, but there was more work to do to improve the passive fire systems and complete the separation of the stairwells through the carpark building, McCormick said.

This work would be incorporated into a Notice to Fix which the council would serve on the body corporate.

Rainey said on Thursday that he went to the ministry because the tower didn’t meet the definition of a dangerous building as previous issues had been fixed.

The handle of a fire door had been vandalised and that was discovered during a fire alarm within the building last week, he said.

A connection between the fire alarm system and Fenz had also been disconnected by a contractor who’d run a fire alarm test but not reconnected the system.

That was also discovered last week as a result of an issue with a sprinkler, which was broken. It should’ve resulted in the fire service being alerted but that didn’t happen. “These are the sort of mistakes that happen in a large building like this.”

Meanwhile, the building’s management said they were short more than $30 million needed for longterm fixes to some fire hazards and recladding, RNZ reported on Thursday.

We are pleased to say that good progress has been made.

Ian McCormick Auckland Council

The building hasn’t had a warrant of fitness since 2017 and the council has issued several notices to fix and infringement fines.

Apartment owners had told the Herald they were dismayed at the lack of transparency from the building owners, managers and body corporate, as it’s not the first time issues had been identified.

One he had no idea where he’d live if the building was deemed unsafe.

“Whether or not the fire alarm goes off, that means nothing to me because we all watched the Grenfell building with the same cladding on, go up in minutes,” another said.

The apartments had previously been subject to a resident’s complaint about their exterior aluminium cladding, the same as that used on Grenfell Tower in London, where a

2017 fire killed more than 70 people. Apartment owner Daniel Young said in 2018 he was “disgusted” the cladding hadn’t been urgently removed.

At the time McCormick, who was in his same role with the council, assured those living and working in the

25 Auckland buildings found to have exterior aluminium composite cladding that they were safe.