Prison revives for visitor experience

### ODT Online Sat, 29 Apr 2017
Tourism intended for prison
By David Loughrey
Dunedin’s old prison has four new trustees, a new tenant with the tourism market in mind, and is ready to move to a new stage in its evolution. The 121-year-old Victorian-style courtyard facility designed by John Campbell has been returned to its original form. Work to replace decorative architectural elements removed from the front of the building was completed recently. Now the Dunedin Prison Charitable Trust is turning its attention to future uses for the former jail that is one of the city’s more unusual historic buildings. The prison was decommissioned in 2007, and the trust bought the property in 2012. Trust chairman Owen Graham said the physical restoration work was 95% complete — ridge tiles and two 2-metre finials still had to be finished — but it was time to start a new stage of evolution for the building. The new trustees had been appointed for their range of skills and backgrounds, and would help the trust make decisions about what happened next. Those decisions could range from another part-upgrade or “go for a multimillion-dollar effort”. […] Mr Graham said part of the trust’s strategy was to start occupying parts of the prison to sustain its activities and “bring the prison back to life with different activities”. It had been working with a business that wanted to use the prison’s kitchen, which had been identified as “serviceable”.
Read more

The former prison has a Heritage New Zealand category one classification; future development involves discussion with Dunedin City Council and Heritage New Zealand.

█ Dunedin Prison | http://www.dunedinprisontrust.co.nz/

[excerpt from the trust’s website]

Timeline
Showing the many phases of use of the prison:
1896-1915 – new prison opened with cells for 52 men and 20 women
1915-1959 – Police move in to administration block and look after prisoners as well as their own duties
1959-1974 – 34 female prisoners are accommodated, segregated from men
1975-1994 – reopened catering for 59 male inmates
1994-2000 – Police move out to their new premises and prison reverts to original purpose as a men only facility
2007 – prison decommissioned and Corrections operation moved to Milburn
2011 – Dunedin Prison Charitable Trust formed to secure the prison for the nation
2012 – Dunedin Prison Charitable Trust raises $50,000 to allow it to purchase the property from Ngai Tahu Property Ltd
2014 – Conservation Plan completed
2015 – Fund-raising begins to allow us to restore the facades and repair part of the slate roof, estimated at $500,000.

Related Posts and Comments:
17.9.15 Dunedin Prison: Community Trust grant for restoration
16.9.15 DPAG exhibition talk, Sun 20 Sep —Jonathan Howard on Dunedin 1865
7.9.15 Public petition to save Courthouse for courts use
30.8.15 DPAG exhibition | Dunedin 1865: A City Rises…
23.8.15 1865 Dunedin —Heritage Festival 2015 ‘The Open City’ … 29 Aug
23.8.15 1865 Dunedin —Heritage Festival 2015 Shoreline Trail launch
11.7.15 Dunedin Law Courts “an incredible historic building” –Minister
14.5.15 Russell Lund on Ministry closure of Dunedin Law Courts
14.5.15 Justice at Dunedin
2.5.15 Ministry serves INJUSTICE for Dunedin Courthouse #HistoricHeritage
28.2.13 Tour the old prison in March (2013)
20.9.12 Dunedin Prison
6.6.12 Dunedin Prison purchased by trust
18.10.11 Dunedin Prison Charitable Trust
5.10.11 Training, jobs, city regeneration

█ For more, enter the term *heritage* in the search box at right.

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

*Images: whatifdunedin sketchbook – Dunedin Prison (former)

Dunedin Prison: Community Trust grant for restoration

39 Dunedin Television Published on Sep 17, 2015
Historic prison restoration gets kickstart

● Resource consent granted for conservation and repair
● Funding from Otago Community Trust
● New visitor centre
● Prison tours
● Restaurant for courtyard

### dunedintv.co.nz Thu, 17 Sep 2015
Historic prison restoration gets kickstart
A $90,000 grant is kickstarting the project to restore Dunedin’s historic prison to its former glory. The money will enable the Dunedin Prison Charitable Trust to start exterior repairs. And that means members are finally able to turn their vision into reality.
Ch39 Link

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[click to enlarge]DCC Webmap – 2 Castle Street, former Dunedin Prison [Jan/Feb 2013]

█ Dunedin Prison Charitable Trust

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Related Posts and Comments:
16.9.15 DPAG exhibition talk, Sun 20 Sep —Jonathan Howard on Dunedin 1865
7.9.15 Public petition to save Courthouse for courts use
30.8.15 DPAG exhibition | Dunedin 1865: A City Rises…
23.8.15 1865 Dunedin —Heritage Festival 2015 ‘The Open City’ … 29 Aug
23.8.15 1865 Dunedin —Heritage Festival 2015 Shoreline Trail launch
11.7.15 Dunedin Law Courts “an incredible historic building” –Minister
14.5.15 Russell Lund on Ministry closure of Dunedin Law Courts
14.5.15 Justice at Dunedin
2.5.15 Ministry serves INJUSTICE for Dunedin Courthouse #HistoricHeritage
28.2.13 Tour the old prison in March (2013)
20.9.12 Dunedin Prison
6.6.12 Dunedin Prison purchased by trust
18.10.11 Dunedin Prison Charitable Trust

█ For more, enter the term *heritage* in the search box at right.

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Christchurch stadium

“No stadium can make money unless it has millions of moneyed sports fans living within its catchment area.” –Lee Vandervis

Christchurch Mail 30-1-14 page 1 | Christchurch Mail 30-1-14 page 3

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Related Post and Comments:
24.1.14 [DCC announces review] Stadium: It came to pass . . .
10.5.13 Debate over new stadium
7.10.12 New stadium worries, NZ wide + a waterfront, ours
30.9.12 Wake-up call for Christchurch #eqnz #SeriousFraud
30.7.12 National Govt puts champagne and stadium before shelter housing
3.6.12 Sunday Star Times: Stadium story: any sliced bread in the murk?
8.11.11 Christchurch: new temporary stadium
9.8.11 Christchurch’s AMI stadium
16.1.10 Deans Stand at AMI Stadium: DONE

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Where House ? Adaptive reuse in the warehouse precinct | Open Lecture Tuesday 14 May

Where House ?
Adaptive reuse of buildings in Dunedin’s warehouse precinct

A presentation by Michael Findlay –professional practice fellow in Applied Sciences, University of Otago

When: Tuesday 14 May 2013 at 7:00 pm
Where: Burns Hall, First Church, Moray Place, Dunedin

All welcome

Hosted by Southern Heritage Trust –enquiries 03 471 8265

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The Otago Branch of New Zealand Historic Places Trust recently merged with Southern Heritage Trust.

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Images and Post by Elizabeth Kerr

Debate over new stadium

CHRISTCHURCH —This means to see the All Blacks play at home against the best opposition, we have to build a stadium that is almost double the size of what we really need just for one event per annum.

Christchurch Stadium concept by architect Thom Craig of AMO Design

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The former chief executive of the council-owned VBase events management operation, now working in the private sector, offers his perspective on the debate about a new stadium for Christchurch.

### stuff.co.nz Last updated 08:39 10/05/2013
Opinion
‘Boutique’ stadium a better option
By Bryan Pearson
I follow the various discussions around stadiums and venues with interest, and thought that the following might help inform that debate. The most recent issue to surface in this debate is about co-location versus integration. If we are simply co-locating other facilities like offices, hotels, and so on, adjacent to the stadium (as shown in the design where there are standalone buildings at each end of the stadium itself) then, while it will add life and activity to the stadium precinct, it will have little if any impact on the stadium business case.

If we are talking about integrated facilities and design which reduce the cost of building the stadium and/or deliver non-event regular income streams for the same cost/investment, then it will improve the stadium business case.

The latter sounds attractive until you start to consider the operational challenges of fully integrated facilities where the 24/7 tenants are effectively displaced on event days. Of course, then there is the issue of supply and demand for commercial office space and accommodation. Already we are seeing large city fringe commercial developments (Victoria St, Lincoln Rd). Then there is the central city where some developments are under way but many developers are already struggling to build the business case due to high costs of construction and soft demand once you get beyond about $400 per square metre.
So where will office space adjacent to the stadium fit in a market which is already showing signs of weakness and over-supply? The reality is the only thing that truly impacts on stadium viability is commercial event days.
Read more

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Dunedin Prison

Events Notice:

New Zealand Historic Places Trust
Otago Branch Committee AGM

TONIGHT
Thursday 20 September 2012, Dunedin Railway Station café
6:30pm to 8:30pm

Guest speaker: Stephen Macknight (structural engineer)
EQ-prone Buildings – The Way Forward

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### ODT Online Thu, 20 Sep 2012
Spend a little time inside, for a fee
By Hamish McNeilly
From next month the doors to the 116-year-old Dunedin Prison will be opened to those wanting a tour of the historic property. The Dunedin Charitable Trust bought the prison for $20,000 in June, after Ngai Tahu deferred its Treaty right to buy the surplus property. Trustee Sarah Girvan said while dates were not yet finalised, small group tours to see the “bare bones prison” were likely to begin next month for a donation of $10 per person. Donations would go towards the prison’s conservation plan – expected to begin in November – and which would “identify our next step in terms of redevelopment”.
Read more

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Related Posts:
6.6.12 Dunedin Prison purchased by trust
18.10.11 Dunedin Prison Charitable Trust

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Dunedin Prison purchased by trust

### ODT Online Wed, 6 Jun 2012
Trust to develop Dunedin prison
By Hamish McNeilly
Ambitious plans for the 116-year-old Dunedin Prison have been locked down, with confirmation the historic property has been sold to a trust intent on transforming it into a tourist attraction. The Dunedin Prison Charitable Trust has bought the property for an undisclosed sum, after Ngai Tahu deferred its first right of refusal to buy the surplus Crown property.

It was envisioned the first stage could be completed by the end of next year to capitalise on the cruise-ship market, and the prison’s location between the Dunedin Railway Station and the upgraded Otago Settlers Museum.

Trust chairman Stewart Harvey said the sale was the culmination of a year of discussions between both parties, and the trust was “extremely grateful to Ngai Tahu for their generosity and co-operation”. The trust was now able to begin fundraising for the estimated $2.6 million needed for the first stage of the prison redevelopment; with the ground floor likely to include a cafe, office areas, function areas and a “prison experience” tour.
Read more

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About Dunedin Prison
[Source: New Zealand Historic Places Trust]
Plans for the new Dunedin Prison were completed in 1892 by John Campbell (1857-1942), Government Architect. Modelled on New Scotland Yard, the prison was designed in a Queen Anne style including cupola domes, dormers, striped brick and Oamaru stone elevations, and fine detailing. The layout consisted of four blocks surrounding a central courtyard. Construction was delayed as the Dunedin community felt the central site could be better utilised. Work finally began, however, in 1895. The exterior was finished by April 1897 and on 16 June 1898 the prison was occupied.
● Summary
● Full registration report

Hocken Snapshot: Dunedin Prison (rendering)

Related Post:
18.10.11 Dunedin Prison Charitable Trust

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Diesoline – supreme winner of the inaugural Dunedin Heritage Re-use Awards

This Dunedin heritage building was almost ‘Man Alone’, as others of its ilk fell to the sword. Now, thanks to its renovation, it’s good to go for some years yet.

Images: Graham Warman

### architecturenow.co.nz Posted 8 Sep 2011
Source: Interior – Sep 2011 (issue: 1)
Sympathetic renovation of Dunedin heritage building
By Michael Barrett
Dunedinites Luke Johnston and Tania Vorrath didn’t let inexperience in the field of heritage building upgrades deter them from taking on this project. The building in question, a late 1800s double-storey brick building, was looking a like a sole survivor in its neighbourhood, 50m back from the Octagon, that was giving way to carparks and modern mid-rise buildings. As an explanation for the building’s survival, Johnston explains that the “building’s significance is in its relative insignificance — it has remained defiantly original”.

Johnston’s idea was to turn this once-unloved building into a contemporary space with character aspects that the public could enjoy. Central Melbourne, with its lanes and lively spaces, was a reference point. The development brief was to revitalise the interior and exterior, providing accommodation for mixed modern uses — Vorrath’s Diesoline Espresso at street level and the boutique office spaces of Johnston’s advertising agency, BrandAid, above.
Read more + Images

Diesoline Espresso, 7 Bath Street, Dunedin
ODT Online 11.3.11 Heritage building use celebrated

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Has DCC Planning lost the plot AGAIN?

### ODT Online Wed, 13 Jul 2011
Call to reject retail development
By Chris Morris
Plans for a multimillion-dollar Green Island retail development should be rejected to help protect Dunedin’s main street experience from a “death by a thousand cuts”, a Dunedin City Council planner says. Irmo Properties Ltd has applied for resource consent to refurbish the rundown Iron Roller Mills Building on Irmo St, Green Island, turning it into a new 4900sq m retail complex with 187 car parks.
Read more

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Comment by Barch67 at ODT Online:
If the developer were to re-name it “The Rugby World Cup Retail Development”, it’d be consented by now.
Link

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

St Clair esplanade, Dunedin

### ODT Online Thu, 31 Mar 2011
Developer sells share in hotel
By Simon Hartley
St Clair developer Stephen Chittock and Calder Stewart Property – who together built 26-room boutique St Clair Beach Resort, valued at $14 million – have parted company, with Mr Chittock retaining no stake in the award-winning hotel.

In October 2006, the area was rezoned from residential 1 to local activity 2, allowing commercial activity for small-scale businesses, retail shops, apartments and restaurants to be built as of right, without public notification. The Dunedin City Council spent more than $6 million rebuilding the Esplanade seawall and redeveloping the landscaping in 2004.

Read more

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

restorm: Will Wiles attempts to deconstruct the legacy of “Saint Jane” Jacobs

Thanks to Storm Cunningham, Washington DC @restorm for the link.

Some crusty issues from this one commentator, Will Wiles, bursting and engaging with levels, biases, contradictions, established takes, whatever, in the considered effort to wake us up.

Apart from the fact that cities (as opposed to country towns like Dunedin?) are ‘live wild animals’, it does no harm to consider the urban environment as a dense web or series of interconnected (metaphorical) ‘rooms’, forming the diverse aggregation of human activity.

Various posts at What if? tangle with diversity, infrastructure, mixed use and spatial ideas, fully knowing the machine that drives formation of a spatial plan at DCC will be very far – frighteningly distant – from approaching contemporary urban theory and practice, including the practical weighty mass of real commerce and ethics.

The non application or watering down of ‘local’ discussion and full-blooded, full-bodied debate will be the risk to Dunedin and the region’s future, premised on a GIS mapping exercise that most probably will work like a parking diagram.

And we know what happened to city parking recently… Political decisions made at Council without adequate understanding of interconnectedness, at the business end of people dynamics. Just wait until this non thinking applies to the city as a whole. It’s coming. Start building your stealth bombers.

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### urbanophile.com 1 March 2011
Saint Jane by Will Wiles

Jacobs appealed to me because it chimed with what I saw in cities and what I liked about them – and the Nurbanists have no idea what this quality is. Their agenda for “neighbourhoods”, “contextuality”, “walkability”, is fundamentally anti-urban. These qualities aren’t necessarily bad in themselves – but combined in pursuit of the singular Nurbanist vision, they mean the vivisection of the city into un-urban cells.

The Pelican edition of Death and Life, with cover by Germano Facetti:

Wiles begins…
A spectre is haunting urbanism – the spectre of Jane Jacobs. The American-Canadian writer and activist died in 2006, but she continues to exert influence over the urban debate, primarily via that dreary federacy of messianic dovecote enthusiasts, the “New Urbanists”, who have taken her up as a kind of guiding prophet. Outside the ranks of the Kunstlers and Kriers, there is a great swath of architects, thinkers and writers on the city who have read Jacobs and hold her in high regard. With a touch of embarrassment, I should include myself in this latter category. Not being an architect, I was an auto-didact in urban theory. When I came across a Pelican edition of Jacobs’ best-known book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, in a second-hand bookshop almost a decade ago, I had never heard of her. But I loved the Germano Facetti cover design, the back sounded interesting enough, and the price was right, so I took it home.

At that point, my reading on urban theory had been scattershot, based entirely in what I found in 2nd-hand bookshops: Corbu, Lewis Mumford, Thomas Sharp, Steen Eiler Rasmussen, an odd band who had given me all sorts of interesting ideas and imagery, but nothing very coherent. What they had in common, more or less, was that I didn’t really enjoy reading them all that much, and had mostly got through to the end in a spirit of patient self-improvement. I picked up Jacobs, expecting more of the same, and instead ploughed through it in a matter of days. If nothing else, she taught me that book-length urban theory could be hugely entertaining.
Read more

-Will Wiles is a writer and Deputy Editor of Icon, a monthly architecture and design magazine.

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

‘Light urbanism’ – planners influencing residential design

USA’s Builder magazine picks their 10 Residential Design Trends for 2011, which include smaller houses, green building, a farm-to-table influence in the kitchen, and a walkable, village feel.

### builderonline.com December 16, 2010
10 Design Trends for 2011
By Jenny Sullivan
[excerpt] “Village Vibe. The suburbs are starting to feel more like little cities as planners and developers find ways to weave density and walkability into existing hot spots. “Fewer large-scale development opportunities have shifted the emphasis to smaller infill projects,” AIA chief economist Kermit Baker wrote in a recent design trends report. But these new nodes of “light urbanism” aren’t replacing existing subdivisions; they are popping up between them and connecting the dots. Prime targets for infill redevelopment include big box parking lots, dead shopping centers, strip malls, and transit stations. “People who want an urban lifestyle but either do not want to live in a ‘big city’ or cannot afford to will look to live in the many suburban town centres that have been emerging,” Urban Land Institute senior resident fellow John McIlwain wrote in a recent white paper.”
Read more

Post by Elizabeth Kerr

Discovering the simple laws of cities

Whenever a city doubles in size, every measure of economic activity, from construction spending to the amount of bank deposits, increases by approximately 15 percent per capita. It doesn’t matter how big the city is; the law remains the same.

West admits that all successful cities are a little uncomfortable. He describes the purpose of urban planning as finding a way to minimize our distress while maximizing our interactions.

Cities are unruly places, largely immune to the desires of politicians and planners. “Think about how powerless a mayor is,” West says. “They can’t tell people where to live or what to do or who to talk to. Cities can’t be managed, and that’s what keeps them so vibrant. They’re just these insane masses of people, bumping into each other and maybe sharing an idea or two. It’s the freedom of the city that keeps it alive.”

### nytimes.com 17 December 2010
A Physicist Solves the City
By Jonah Lehrer
Geoffrey West is a theoretical physicist in search of fundamental laws, he likes to compare his work to that of Kepler, Galileo and Newton. …although West worked for decades as a physicist at Stanford University and Los Alamos National Laboratory, he started thinking about leaving the field after the financing for the Texas superconducting supercollider was cancelled by Congress in 1993. West, however, wasn’t ready to retire, and so he began searching for subjects that needed his skill set. Eventually he settled on cities: the urban jungle looked chaotic — all those taxi horns and traffic jams — but perhaps it might be found to obey a short list of universal rules.

“We spend all this time thinking about cities in terms of their local details, their restaurants and museums and weather,” West says. “I had this hunch that there was something more, that every city was also shaped by a set of hidden laws.”

And so West set out to solve the City.

West saw the metropolis as a sprawling organism, defined by its infrastructure. (The boulevard was like a blood vessel, the back alley a capillary.) This implied that the real purpose of cities, and the reason cities keep on growing, is their ability to create massive economies of scale, just as big animals do.

After analysing the first sets of city data — the physicists began with infrastructure and consumption statistics — they concluded that cities looked a lot like elephants. In city after city, the indicators of urban “metabolism”, like the number of gas stations or the total surface area of roads, showed that when a city doubles in size, it requires an increase in resources of only 85 percent. This straightforward observation has some surprising implications. It suggests, for instance, that modern cities are the real centres of sustainability.
Read more

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Post by Elizabeth Kerr

DScene: Carisbrook opportunity for light industrial park

### D Scene 30.06.10
Kicked into touch (page 1)
Grassroots rugby fear their voices might not be heard as plans to redevelop Carisbrook – the home of the game in Dunedin for more than a century – are laid out. See p3. #bookmark

Register to read D Scene online at http://fairfaxmedia.newspaperdirect.com/

Supporters feel left out (page 3)
By Wilma McCorkindale
Otago rugby supporters are miffed they appear to have been shunned in discussions over the future of Carisbrook. The Otago Rugby Supporters Club and the Southern Rugby Club are anxious about their own futures after a stakeholders’ meeting held at the historic Dunedin ground on Monday night.
{continues} #bookmark

Chin defended the lack of invitation to the Southern Rugby Club, and said organisers did not have a brief of ideas that would be proposed at the meeting.

Light industrial park proposed (page 5)
Carisbrook should be developed into a light industrial park, Farra Engineering chief executive John Whitaker told a Carisbrook stakeholders meeting on Monday night. Whitaker said land on the Taieri that had been put aside by the Dunedin City Council for industrial use was too remote from markets, suppliers and networks.
{continues} #bookmark

The trust believed the property would be most suited as a light industrial park within which the heritage structures and some of the field would be retained.
-Owen Graham, New Zealand Historic Places Trust

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Tourism campaign ‘disappointing’ (page 3)
By Wilma McCorkindale
A campaign supposed to turn Dunedinites into local tourists has disappointed the Dunedin City Council (DCC).
{continues} #bookmark

“It didn’t have the success Toursim Dunedin were hoping for. A flop would be a harsh way to describe it – but not the success we thought, yeah”
-John Bezett, DCC economic development

Biz: Crunching the numbers
Room for one more (pages 13-14)
Bunnings believes there are plenty of home handymen and gardeners to go around, as the hardware chain prepares to challenge its competitors head on in South Dunedin. Mike Houlahan reports.
{continues} #bookmark #bookmark

The 12,500 square metre shop – believed to be the fourth-largest Bunnings Warehouse in the country – is now scheduled to hold its grand opening on July 7.

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Future of Carisbrook: Not on advice of one planning consultant

1. Time to check what an individual’s business agenda might be.
2. In the interests of balance, ODT shouldn’t have privileged the views of one planning professional in the story.

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### ODT Online Tue, 29 Jun 2010
Carisbrook for sport and build on Bathgate Park, meeting told
By Chris Morris
Carisbrook would be retained as the home for sports fields in South Dunedin and Bathgate Park developed for new affordable social housing under a proposal floated at a meeting in Dunedin last night.
Read more

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Where’s the FULL background information pack that would normally prompt consultative practice – the Mayor can’t skip the requirement on Dunedin City Council to provide this.

Bathgate Park isn’t owned by the Dunedin City Council. The Park isn’t in the equation for Carisbrook’s future.

Have your say on Carisbrook’s future at http://www.dunedin.govt.nz/council-online/public-consultation/consultations/future-of-carisbrook/_nocache

Vancouver – how to bankroll ‘civic responsibility’ in the built environment

### thetyee.ca 25 June 2010
Vancouver’s Architectural Revival
Behind the shiny surfaces there is a public logic guided by City Hall policies.
By Adele Weder, TheTyee.ca

[Editor’s note: This is excerpted from A Guidebook to Contemporary Architecture in Vancouver, just published by Douglas and McIntyre. A second excerpt on Vancouver as ‘supermodel,’ by Matthew Soules, runs next week.]

On Aug. 7, 1971, officers on horseback charged into a crowd in Gastown, the original downtown core of Vancouver, and swung their batons at the thousand people who had gathered or wandered there to protest marijuana laws and the nefarious police tactics used to enforce them. At the intersection of Abbott and Cordova, marchers and onlookers were beaten or hauled into paddywagons and the public gathering soon transformed into what became known as the Gastown Riot, one of the most notorious brawls in the city’s history. In the years that followed, the neighbourhood withered, its zoning geared towards the tawdry tourist outlets that would long dominate it, its days as a gathering site all but over.

Making architecture is, at its core, a political action. Implicit in the design approach is the decision to encourage or thwart public gatherings, nurture or displace the poor, ignite or asphyxiate street life, rabble-rouse or calm the streets for paying visitors. At first glance, the shiny newness of central Vancouver suggests a manifesto of clarity and order, a divergence from the fiery social consciousness of decades past. (To sample that sensation, comb through the photo essay of buildings accompanying this essay.)

Underlying these images of finesse and resolve, however, are backstories of complex negotiations between public and private interests whose endgame is the greater public good. With increased density allowance as the currency, the resulting deals have spawned an unprecedented array of community centres, daycares, parks, public art and social housing.

Gastown’s current robust and widely inclusive revival owes much to City Hall — the very institution that had sanctioned the police bullying and subsequent neighbourhood stagnation in the first place.
Read more + Images + Blog Comments

–Adele Weder is a Vancouver-based architectural writer and curator, and co-author of the Guidebook to Contemporary Architecture in Vancouver.

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Post by Elizabeth Kerr

/via RT @BusbyPW Vancouver”s Architectural Revival @TheTyee http://thetyee.ca/Books/2010/06/25/VancouversArchitecturalRevival/

D Scene features heritage/issues!

### D Scene 24-3-10 (front cover)
Car boot sale
A developer has chosen a novel way to make his point over [a] resource consent charge, and is selling his car to meet fees incurred restoring his Crawford St building. See p3. #bookmark

Possible closure strikes a chord (page 2)
By Mike Houahan
Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, I earned a living writing about and reviewing rock ’n’ roll bands. Hence, the news that venerable Dunedin venue Sammy’s is on the brink of closure unless it is rapidly brought up to scratch to meet fire regulations struck a chord… Rock ’n’ roll has almost always been shunted into back-alley venues not fit for purpose, and venues and band managers have often colluded to stuff as many punters in as possible to maximise their revenue.
{continues} #bookmark

Fuming over charges (page 3)
By Wilma McCorkindale
Dunedin City Council may have another zoning battle on its hands, with building co-owner Lawrie Forbes fuming over consent charges for a redevelopment in moribund Crawford St. DCC zoned blocks from Queens Garden to the Oval large-scale retail in 1995, but Forbes believes the zone is not viable and has called for the council to review it.

Forbes said he and partner Craig McNaughton were restoring two of the four buildings on the site at present. Heritage values that had been lost over the century were being restored.

{continues} #bookmark

****

The following headline should not imply the building proposal has been granted resource consent. The application has yet to be notified.

Ex-gallery revamp approved (page 5)
By Wilma McCorkindale
One end of the old art gallery building at Logan Park is up for demolition – part of a $5m Dunedin City Council spend up at Logan Park…the last of the buildings which housed the [New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition (1925-1926)] still in public ownership, is to lose some of its southern end to accommodate an extension to the University Oval sports ground.

‘[Paul]Hudson conceded council intially considered levelling the entire former art gallery as it grappled with the high cost* of the work required to retain it.’

{continues} #bookmark

*That was just ‘historical’ airyfairy bullshit from council on the cost of building retention.

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Bus tourists ‘not welcome’ (page 6)
By Wilma McCorkindale
City hotelier Peter Laing is questioning the city’s attitude towards bus tourists, after he recently paid a parking ticket slapped on a tour bus dropping tourists outside his hotel. Laing said the bus had no option but to park on one of two P5 zones the Dunedin City Council had erected outside the hotel…[he] claimed the new P5s were a remnant of the council’s u-turn on unpopular parking changes it introduced last year.
{continues} #bookmark

Register to read D Scene online at http://fairfaxmedia.newspaperdirect.com/

User-pays system a ‘farce’ (page 8)
By Wilma McCorkindale
A Dunedin landlord is peeved at Dunedin City Council’s rules on rating of rental properties, saying its user-pays system was a farce. Darryl Jones was angry over an anomaly he identified between the rating method of his aging block of flats in Stuart St and on studio unit complexes in the city.
{continues} #bookmark

Talk: Dunedin on Dunedin
Your say: Letters to the Editor (page 9)
It didn’t happen overnight, by K Nordal Stene, North East Valley
The shocking state of Sammy’s, which necessitated ats immediate closure, has been a shock as well as a disappointment to many.
{continues} #bookmark

“The Building Act and the Fire Service Act place the obligation on the building owner to operate the building safely.”
-Trevor Tilyard, Dunedin Fire Service

Read the deputy chief fire officer’s full reply.

****

The Invisible City (pages 11-12)
By Gavin Bertram
Ancient cities like London, Paris and Rome have layers of history beneath them. These hidden strata tell the story of their habitation by humans, of the rise and fall of empires, and of inexorable progress. Unlike those great metropolises, subterranean Dunedin can’t claim layers going back to Roman times and beyond. But what’s buried under the city is still a source of fascination, and a great window into its history.
{continues} #bookmark #bookmark

Biz: Crunching the numbers (page 20)
Starting it up
Upstart Business Incubator is in the business of getting people into business, but it also has to pay its own way. Mike Houlahan reports.
From its Princes St premises, Upstart has nine companies in “incubation” with five in pre-incubation – a process of readying firms for the full programme of mentoring and business assistance, which becomes available to fledgling entrepreneurs when they graduate to the incubator.
{continues} #bookmark

Post by Elizabeth Kerr

Note to DCC, via New Jersey

Not mentioning Prista here, that’s for later (soon).
Don’t you love this story – and developer Larry Bijou.

### nj.com February 02, 2010, 2:42PM
Hoboken Now
Garden Street Lofts wins gold award for going green
By Mark Maurer/The Jersey Journal
Back in 1919, the structure at 1425 Garden St, in Hoboken was a storage warehouse and factory for processing coconuts so as to be used for shredded toppings on Hostess snowball cupcakes. Plenty has changed. As of last year, the building was an environmentally friendly, mixed residential high-rise called Garden Street Lofts, with 30 luxury condominiums and a sedum ground-covered, grassy roof for carbon monoxide emissions.

Outside the building’s façade Tuesday morning, Garden Streets Lofts developer Larry Bijou was congratulated by officials from Hoboken, Hudson County and the state for his green construction. The U.S. Green Building Council, a non-profit trade organisation that promotes sustainable buildings, recently designated the building of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) gold certification. It’s the first mixed residential high-rise in New Jersey.

The building – which has also been recognised as a top green project by the Sustainable Building Industry Council – was reconstructed in 2009 in an effort to receive LEED silver certification based on a meticulous checklist of energy efficiency requirements.

“Saving our heritage buildings is important to preserving our culture in Hoboken.”
-Larry Bijou, Bijou Properties

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Thanks to Storm Cunningham (@rewealth) for the tweet alert on this item.

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

“Transforming a sea of asphalt”

What was that down at Awatea Street. Ever get sick of petrochemical surfaces and glaring urban planning ineptitudes… And yes, DCC urban designers, I agree with you, public streets can be more than traffic corridors – the potential mixes or sequences of use are the opportunity…

Chris Doudney, retired University of Otago Staff Architect sent me this link, saying: “The comments run the full gamut of objection/support – I liked the heartfelt one from the waterfront champion.”

BY DESIGN
Allison Arieff – A New York Times Blog
September 22, 2009, 10:00 pm
Pavement to Parks

Last Friday, cities and towns throughout the world celebrated Park(ing) Day, an event created to bring awareness to the importance of using and enjoying public space. Witnessing all those swaths of pavement transformed into plant-filled community gathering spaces (Streetfilms.org has a short film of San Francisco’s Park(ing) Day) got me thinking about — given the tangential way my brain works — the process of land-banking.

Land banking — the strategic acquisition of land in advance of expanding urban development, and the holding on to it as long as possible to maximize profits — is especially pronounced in once-booming, now-busted city centers like Las Vegas, Baltimore and Phoenix, which by the way now has more vacant land than any other major city in the United States. With the economic downturn things have changed somewhat, but there remain huge numbers of empty lots being “banked” in downtowns nationwide, all waiting for a real estate recovery.
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– Allison Arieff is editor at large for Sunset, and the former editor in chief of Dwell magazine. She is co-author of the books “Prefab” and “Trailer Travel”, and the editor of many books on design and popular culture, including “Airstream: The History of the Land Yacht” and “Cheap Hotels”. Allison Arieff lives in San Francisco.

Post by Elizabeth Kerr