Quake costs seen as threat to towns

Rules that one businessman believes could bring about the end of small towns in Southland look set to be introduced.

A full Southland District Council meeting on Wednesday will consider a recommendation that the main streets of four Southland towns be deemed priority areas of high vehicle and pedestrian traffic.

If it is approved, building owners in the priority zones at Otautau, Riverton, Winton and Wyndham would need to have their buildings assessed and brought up to earthquake standards within 121⁄2 years.

A non-priority building would have to be remediated within 25 years.

When the council heard public submissions on the matter in December, Christchurch businessman Lindsay Gutsell, formerly of Otautau, said with many buildings in the towns already empty, the extra cost of remediation could be the end of small-town Southland.

Gutsell leases a building to a hairdresser in Otautau.

A report by council building compliance team leader Simon Tonkin is expected to be presented to the council on Wednesday.

In the report, Tonkin says some submitters disagree with this approach [the recommended option] and submitted that there is not enough foot or vehicular traffic to warrant any of the towns being priority areas.

Assessing the buildings in the shorter time frames [12.5 years compared to 25] could cause financial stress for the owners, Tonkin says.

A sufficient number of buildings in the four townships have predominantly unreinforced masonry, he says.

‘‘The Christchurch earthquakes clearly showed that unreinforced masonry buildings create a higher risk and potential loss of life to people passing by these buildings,’’ Tonkin says in the report.

Scaling down the priority areas on the main streets was considered but not an option, he says.

Tuatapere had been considered as a possible priority thoroughfare, but Tonkin recommends against this.

The council wrote to 149 property owners in the proposed zones during the consultation period and 22 responded.