‘It’s going to be another ghost town’
A group of Otautau main street building owners hope that banding together may soften the blow of paying for earthquake-prone building assessments.
They fear Otautau, Riverton, Winton and Wyndham may become ‘‘ghost towns’’ as building owners struggle to meet the costs to get buildings up to earthquake standards.
A hundred and twenty buildings on the main street of the four rural Southland towns are now identified as priority, and need to be assessed by an engineer and brought up to earthquake standards in 12-and-a-half years.
A Southland District Council decision this week ratified the priority areas of high foot and vehicle traffic in the medium seismic risk zone that the buildings stand in.
Otautau businessmen Lindsay Gutsell and Keith Froude hope bringing together the owners on Main St will minimise the cost of each $2500 initial engineer’s assessment. A second, detailed assessment could cost up to $25,000.
Gutsell leases a building in the priority zone to a hairdresser, and Froude owns and runs Central Garage Otautau with his wife, Thelma.
Froude’s family have run the business for 50 years, and he and his wife feel the earthquake regulations may be the death of Otautau.
‘‘It’s going to be another ghost town. It’ll destroy it. This is going to destroy every small town in Southland,’’ Thelma Froude said.
The base of their building was built 120 years ago and had withstood at least three major earthquakes, Keith Froude said.
‘‘They’re . . . condemning every building and saying we’re guilty, and we have to prove our innocence.’’
He is frustrated he has to pay for an assessment to prove his building is up to standard. ‘‘There’s more people who die per year from the pressure of running a business, by suicide, than die in earthquakes,’’ he said.
A lot of history and family businesses in the four towns needed to be protected, Gutsell said.
‘‘We don’t want them to become ghost towns like Ohai, Nightcaps,’’ Gutsell said.
But the rules were in law now so owners have ‘‘just got to do what we got to do’’, Gutsell said.
Minister for building and construction Poto Williams said the earthquake-prone building system was ultimately about protecting lives.
The time frames balanced the safety of the building with providing a reasonable amount of time for the owners to plan, fund and undertake remediation work, Williams said.
Help was available at the Crown entity Heritage EQUIP and at building.govt.nz, she said.
Peter and Rachel Davey sell secondhand decor from their shop on the Riverton main street, which used to be the fire station.
The couple moved from Ōpōtiki four years ago, after fixing an earthquakeprone building there.
They will pay for the initial report and whatever work needs to be done, but fear others cannot.
‘‘People here can’t afford that kind of money,’’ Rachel Davey said.