City’s civic heart still years away
New $76 million centre likely to be completed by 2027 — a decade after its previous home forced to close
Napier is rounding the home stretch in the race for a new civic centre, but it could still be another four years. The dream is now visualised in a concept for Te Aka, a proposed $76 million project up for endorsement at a Napier City Council meeting yesterday, envisaging a new civic centre will be in place in 2027 — a decade after its home of 60 years closed after a failed earthquake risk assessment.
Demolition of the 1960s building facing Hastings St and between Station St and the Napier Courthouse started in 2022 and was completed early this year.
The associated public library building, fronting Station St, which was also vacated, remains in place with the council having last month endorsed a business case that proposes a sale-and-lease of the building for redevelopment to accommodate about 200 staff.
They have been accommodated over several sites for the past six years, including a headquarters in Cape View House, on the corner of Vautier St and Marine Pde, Dunvegan House, in Hastings St, and the old Post Office on the corner of Hastings and Dickens streets.
In April 2020, in the first weeks of the first Covid-19 lockdown, the council’s first full meeting by videoconferencing, with members selfisolating mainly in their homes around the city, confirmed the establishment of a Civic Precinct Steering Group. Its task was to develop Project Trifecta — around the use of the former Civic Building site, new city council premises and re-establishing the library, which has also been split, between the MTG on the corner of Tennyson and Herschell streets, and the Taradale library.
A report to the council says that as part of the kaupapa, a cultural narrative has been developed that begins to describe what is unique about the place, the people and the stories that make up the whenua.
It says the building of a cultural narrative has been an integral part of the concept design process, and with the appointment of a mana whenua design lead, an “open and productive dialogue” had been developed through all elements of the process with mana whenua.
“The ensuing narrative has set the foundations of the concept from the ground up and seen it weave through the whole design process,” it says.
Buildings throughout New Zealand were condemned as earthquake risks as new standards were implemented after the Canterbury earthquakes.