Updated post 19.8.14 at 9:21 p.m.
Land Use Consent: LUC-2014-259
31 & 33 Thomas Burns Street, Dunedin
New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency Co Ltd Building
█ Consent Hearing reconvenes — Wednesday 20 Aug at 2:00 PM
ALL WELCOME | Edinburgh Room, Municipal Chambers, The Octagon
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Related Posts and Comments:
17.8.14 Public Notices: NZ Loan and Mercantile Building…
13.8.14 Chamber’s Own Goals —Heritage (letters)
11.8.14 NZ Loan and Mercantile Building (audio)
8.8.14 NZ Loan and Mercantile Agency Co Ltd Building…
█ For more, enter the terms *loan and mercantile* or *harbourside* in the search box at right.
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Post and images by Elizabeth Kerr
*Images: Public site tour held on Monday afternoon, 18 August 2014 – hosted by building owner Russell Lund in association with Stewart Hansen of the Wharf Hotel (50 participants)
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What if? Dunedin... 
actually that’s quite scary – all those thin white pillars and no diagonal bracing – at least the skin is (presumably) reinforced concrete. Mind you having lived in places where people judge buildings every time they enter them with “do I want to be here when there’s an earthquake” many Dunedin buildings scare me,
I assume they’re going to do some serious earthquake work before people live there.
Mike, before hearing today and for a long time before, the engineering of the NZ Loan and Mercantile Building has been well understood by the building owner/constructor, engineers and other locals who have researched the construction system. This is also being addressed at hearing today for people like yourself and others including some DCC staff that tend to think there may be structural issues that are perhaps unmediated, can’t be mediated or are not typical for a building of this kind. Note the first floor, for example, has 128 columns at 3.5 m centres, a veritable forest of sorts. The building has rates relief for two years while seismic performance is enhanced. As with the ADI Building, layers of steel reinforced concrete will be poured as diaphragms (very rigid “brace sheets” and tied to the stone wall systems) over existing timber floors – this engineering method is currently being applied to the second floor proposed for apartments. Unlike ADI, the L&M Building has a basement and this was very substantially strengthened with concrete piling some years ago. While not describing the whole system here the applicant and their experts are confident that there is no threat of lateral spread for the building according to ground conditions in an earthquake event. Once I have copy of all evidence I can make it available here. Hanlons are the consulting engineers for Mr Lund and his team.
Yeah that sounds good (it’s the equivalent to adding shear walls under an old wooden house).
Most old Dunedin wooden houses sit on piles of bricks, made with very old mortar, no sheer walls, no buried foundations, I worry we’ll lose a lot of our 100 yr old housing stock, especially on the hills, people who think they’re safe because they’re “on bedrock” when the alpine fault lets loose. Upstairs those old kauri villas will probably survive, they’re well built and flexible – but they don’t have a lot underneath tying them to the ground if it starts to shake side to side.
Yes Christchurch #eqnz in particular has shown the poor quality of historic foundations and lack of tying of the houses to their foundations has been an expensive exercise. Simple brick or timber clad 1920s-1940s bungalows on flat sites with severe post-quake foundation problems can easily cost over $100,000 to replace foundations in like kind, exceeding the EQC psyout limit. Indeed, yep Mike, imagine our hillside housing…
Image supplied by Anonymous.
Tues 19 Aug 2014 at 10:43 p.m.
Message: ChCh re-foundation solution you might find interesting.
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http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/christchurch-earthquake-2011/8260661/House-lifting-technology-could-save-homes
The lunatic response to the perceived earthquake risk needs to be put in perspective. Nobody seems to be seriously questioning it from the first premise. For the entire recorded history of NZ there have been only 458 deaths caused by earthquakes. There are 10 times that die each year through obesity, same for smoking, not far off that for motor vehicle accidents. For the latter, the collateral cost is far more than that for serious disablement. Add to that the huge human cost of sports injuries, adventure tourism, forestry accidents, etc etc. The list just goes on and on. These statistics are year on year, decade on decade. The crazy over-reaction to this “earthquake risk” has seen a sensationalized new threat sweep NZ. Had there been a Tsunami, instead of Christchurch’s big earthquake, we would have the Tsumami Zealots forcing us to fund sea walls along the coast.
For a fraction of the cost the billions of dollars of strengthening buildings and the whole new non productive industry that has spurned, more funding for education on obesity and smoking, and incentives for people to drive safer vehicles, would be a better allocation of resource.
Not merely education on obesity, Jeff. Gastric bands work brilliantly and even deal to type 2 diabetes at the same time. A major surgery catch-up – paying CEO rates to surgeons and anaesthetists if that’s what it takes – would return the hip, knee, cataract, obesity, carpal tunnel people to health and productive lives, the proportion of fit people in general society might even encourage those who are stuffing their gobs with junk food that turning into a gross blob means being rather a freak among the functioning majority, instead of being only a short step from average. And perhaps that’ll discourage them from regular gluttony.
You’re so right, Jeff. The figures of risk per person per year from building+earthquake are very very small compared with other causes of harm. We’re spending up large on a panic. What about the danger of being trampled by runaway cattle, now there has been such a change from sheep to dairying? In an earthquake would the fences hold? Just askin’.
No jeff less taxes should be the response. When are the existing persons going to understand that we will ALL die. Trying to save people from this imminent and certain result is in fact a useless waste of time and resources. The date and time of your death is at the moment indeterminable unless you are Philip Nitschke or have your own cunning plan.
The taking of citizens monies to avoid in any way this certain result is just another method of extracting funds from the gullible and transferring them to the unemployable.
Yes, Hype. I agree with all you say. You preach to the converted with me on the health system as a priority. Over 20 years ago I had to privately arrange and fund a life saving operation for my first child. It cost as much as a luxury car and took years to pay off. Hence, when I see tax money and land tax money [rates] squandered on lunatic projects it makes me very angry. We’ve seen literally billions of dollars diverted away from good causes to fund the likes of professional sport, such as rugby, yachting and golf. This is as people die on waiting lists and new treatments and medications are denied, on the basis of cost. There really isn’t a shortage of money here in NZ, it is more a case of where national and local politicians prioritize to spend.
On a local level, it should be mandatory for all councillors to go and see the poor and unfortunate that frequent the South Dunedin low decile supermarkets, particularly on benefit day. To any thinking person it would reveal just how stupid and decadent the endless idiotic expensive DCC projects are. The poor and vulnerable here cannot afford to go to the stadium, will not use the cycleways, probably couldn’t care less about the Settlers Museum or Town Hall upgrades, yet they’re forced to fund them. The arrogance these idiots display each time they embark on yet another ego-fueled scheme is breathtaking.
It is interesting not one advocate group has spoken out about the endless expensive foolish vanity projects.
jeff, all of the saving recommendations in your treatise I agree with. As to the spending, unfortunately I cannot agree with the emotive suggestion or suggestions, everyone has a relative who is sick, has died or may die soon.
Such is the nature of living, there is an inevitable result. I have seen extremely intelligent persons and wealthy faced with terminal cancer who have given their whole life earnings and ambitions to a Mexican soothsayer to grab a few extra days. Lunacy is defined as phases of the moon, but we see it in desperation in individual cases and collective desperation in idiots like those running the campaign for stopping a few mad cyclists who want to ride on the motorway or main routes and be totally safe. So we as a nation and as a city will spend $47 million to let them ride a bike. Give them all a car and we would be better off financially. Give them a gym membership, but do not force the rest of the populus to pay for their and the collective guilt.
DCC to foot apartments consent bill
The Dunedin City Council is footing the bill to process the consent required for the development of the former Loan and Mercantile Building in the harbourside area.
http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/314122/dcc-foot-apartments-consent-bill