Quake-prone warehouse to go
The days of Nelson’s old Mediterranean Food Warehouse building are numbered, after councillors voted to demolish it.
The building at 23 Halifax St is earthquake prone, assessed at just 25 per cent of the New Building Standard in 2012, and the council is required to address the risk by January 2022.
Structural engineering consultants told the Nelson City Council at a full meeting yesterday that in the event of an earthquake, the upper wall of 23 Halifax could ‘‘fail’’ and collapse onto the Elma Turner Library next door.
The building is set to be ‘‘deconstructed’’, at an estimated cost of $753,000, rather than demolished. In deconstruction, as much building material as possible is salvaged for reuse or recycling. Deconstruction is generally more expensive than demolishing a building but results in less waste going to landfill.
Councillor Tim Skinner was dubious that there would be any market for recycled materials from the building, as he doubted any of materials would truly be reusable. But Mayor Rachel Reese said if there was truly no resale value, that information would come back to the council before deconstruction proceeded.
Councillor Kate Fulton said even if the building was ‘‘not the best first deconstruction project’’, there were still uses for old concrete or building materials that was better than throwing everything into landfill.
She congratulated council staff for taking the initiative on climate issues.
‘‘I want to start off by saying . . . how delightful it is that the team have picked up on the climate change emergency that we declared last year,’’ she said.
‘‘I appreciate how mindful you’ve been of the climate.’’
She said the deconstruction estimates, which put the cost at just 10 per cent more than standard demolition, were lower than she expected, and much of that price tag was wrapped up in asbestos-handling costs.
The report to council about the deconstruction says evidence shows deconstruction creates less carbon emissions, largely through reusing materials, than a more traditional approach to demolition.
The cost of deconstruction will be funded from the just over $1 million budget set for the council’s Elma Turner Library Redevelopment project.
The deconstruction came under the umbrella of the redevelopment project because the new footprint of the library after its completion could extend into the former Mediterranean Food Warehouse building site.
The biggest chunk of the cost was expected to be the contracting and deconstruction work, at $233,000, followed by asbestos investigation and disposal at $215,000.
A 40 per cent contingency of $215,000 was included in the total.
Councillor Gaile Noonan said there was just one disappointing aspect to the deconstruction proposal: ‘‘I wanted to be the person to drive the bulldozer into that building, and now that won’t happen.’’