On Thursday night (11.10.10) there was a very positive meeting of wharf users and stakeholders in Raglan Town Hall Supper Room for a presentation by Beca Infrastructure and Waikato District Council on options for getting the Raglan Wharf working again. The sounds of a zumba session in the Town Hall proper added to the magic of the meeting.
Waikato District Council signed up Beca Infrastructure in early October on a $199,270 contract to look at replacement of the original part of the wharf and the buildings on top. At that time the contract was let, WDC said that they had expected to pay half a million dollars for the consulting project. Daniel Thompson, the WDC Senior Project Engineer, said, “We believe the consultants have used their technical expertise to devise a programme which does not involve the level of work we were expecting.”
Beca Infrastructure presented three options to the meeting of about 50 people:
- Total rebuild
- New piles and deck
- Repair
Becas have considerable experience repairing wharves around Waitemata Harbour and say the that Raglan Wharf would be a straight forward repair job. The repair option would be quicker and cheaper and better as less disruption to wharf users and businesses. It also retains heritage structure – this is one of the very first examples of reinforced concrete used for a wharf in NZ.
An architect from Beca Infrastructure presented a concept for a modern replacement building on the wharf. The meeting rejected this design and told WDC/ Beca to use the community design that Mark Mathers and Peter Storey had come up with previously. People did like the idea of a modular design within the building structure and Tony Sly said that as a tenant he would appreciate ways of getting more light into the building. It was pointed out that the Beca design didn’t seem to fit the needs of working wharf.
So the 50 people present all opted for Option 3 – repair. The message to WDC was clear- get on with Option 3 tomorrow. The only delay for the project is now Environment Waikato, who are insisting on a resource consent to approve the wharf being there. Many people at the meeting expressed the view that this was ridiculous. It seems highly likely that the focus of the Raglan Community will now swing to EW with an expectation that they stop what people see as nonsense and take urgency on this critical work.
The community designed replacement wharf building is an opportunity lost. This site deserves to have the best minds in the country applied to it. I suggest throwing open the design to all New Zealand architects in a competition to see who can come up with the most popular, most practical, and most inspiring design for this wonderful, unique site.
Is Raglan going to become a town of corrugated iron sheds (note the new look-alikes in the township) which all look the same? We need to be more inspirational than this.