Regional council builds Palace, refuses help to dredge Otago boat harbour

The ironies are Most Apparent.

The Otago Regional Council contributed $30m to the stadium roof (an activity beyond its local authority mandate), yet the council has no intention of helping the Otago Yacht Club to maintain the city’s marina, the Otago Boat Harbour.

[click to enlarge]
DCC Webmaps – Otago Boat Harbour at Mouth of Leith JanFeb 2013

Otago Yacht Club’s origin dates back to 1892, making it one of the oldest yacht clubs in Otago. The club caters for a range of sailing interests from keelboats to trailer yachts and centreboarders. The club also operates keeler haul-out facilities and welcomes visiting boats. The club manages a full events programme during summer, including harbour, coastal and ocean races. On Sunday mornings in the season the club runs ‘learn to sail’ and ‘learn to race’ programmes which cater for all ages. The clubhouse is a popular venue for private functions and for local organisations to hold meetings and events. Within walking distance of the city centre, the clubhouse offers showers, laundry facilities, email connections etc. The resident caretaker-manager will usually manage to accommodate requests for berthage for boats up to 50 feet. The alongside mooring facilities consist of several large punts inside a walled boat harbour. Due to silting, access to the boat harbour has only been tenable approximately two hours either side of high tide for boats with 2m draft. The Otago boat harbour was last dredged in 1995.
Source: otagoyachtclub.org.nz

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### ODT Online Thu, 20 Apr 2017
Club gets go-ahead to dredge boat harbour
By David Loughrey
The Otago Boat Harbour is about to get its first dredging in more than 20 years, after the facility reached such a state rescue vessels could not leave the harbour at low tide. The work, expected to start soon, has been described as a major achievement by the Otago Yacht Club, which leases the boat harbour. Club vice-commodore Blair McNab said the cost of the project – more than $300,000 – was being paid for from grants and club membership fees. […] The club recently received resource consent from the Dunedin City Council for the work. The consent allowed the club to deposit dredged sediment and soil on land in Magnet St, behind the club, for drying. Mr McNab said once the dredged material had been dried, which took about two weeks, it would be taken to the nearby Logan Point quarry. The consent said once the work was completed, about 100cu m would remain on the grass area at Magnet St to form a barrier around its perimeter, and provide better drainage. The consent decision said the boat harbour was in such a state that at low tide, craft used for harbour rescues could not get out. […] The club had hoped the Otago Regional Council might help with the cost of the dredging, as alterations to the Water of Leith meant more spoil was coming from the nearby mouth of the stream. Mr McNab said it appeared the council was not going to help.
Read more

The Star April 2014 via Otago Yacht Club. Also at ODT Online 22.4.14

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The Otago Regional Council’s “special consultation” over its Dunedin headquarters is flawed, writes former councillor Gerrard Eckhoff.

### ODT Online Tue, 18 Apr 2017
Review needed in lieu of proper consultation
By Gerrard Eckhoff
The Otago Regional Council’s annual plan is now open for public consultation. Implicit in the word consultation is the opening of a meaningful dialogue with the public. It would be entirely disingenuous for any local authority to enter into discussion on their annual plan by merely informing the public of council intent without showing a willingness to accept “the wisdom of crowds”.
….This year’s ORC annual plan contains four lines on “Dunedin building review” in its feedback document which could easily be missed at first reading. To its credit, the council has finally accepted its statutory obligation for “special consultation” on this $30million major project.
….The last time the council ventured forth on a new building project without any prior special consultation, it cost the ratepayers upwards of $3million for the concept design and drawings alone. The cost of that proposal was well over $30million and it was never built. It is, therefore, hard to reconcile how the new building/s is going to be around the projected $20million mark, unless building costs have halved in Dunedin from eight years or so ago. The potential cost of a new car park building must also be factored in, so the ratepayers could soon be the lucky owners of two new buildings, as well as a difficult-to-sell ORC headquarters building in Stafford St.
Read more

DCC Webmap – Dowling St carpark JanFeb 2013, ORC office site starred

Related Posts and Comments:
9.1.17 ORC $wimming in it —SHOULD afford more Otago environmental…
15.8.16 ORC : Official complaints show integrity
22.6.16 ORC New HQ : Reminder, fiduciary duty and core responsibilities
● 9.6.16 ORC empire building again : Consultants give questionable options…
11.8.12 ODT editorial (spot on!) — ORC temporary headquarters
26.6.09 ORC headquarters [incl news items to present day]

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

*Images: Otago Yacht Club except where stated otherwise.

ORC: Commemorative bridge?

### ODT Online Wed, 20 Nov 2013
Leith walkway bridge proposed
By Rebecca Fox
The Otago Regional Council will consider funding a World War 1 commemorative walking and cycling bridge over the Water of Leith, at a possible cost of between $1 million and $2.5 million. The bridge, near Magnet St and the mouth of the Leith, would link the West Harbour cycle-walkway with a Dunedin City Council-funded extension to the inner-harbour walkway.
Read more

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ORC Policy Committee Agenda and Reports 20 Nov 2013
See Item 2 2013/1154
Harbourside walkway/cycleway: bridging Water of Leith.
DPRP, 6/11/13 (pages 5-8)

ORC Walk/Cycle location plan (detail from page 8) – dotted yellow line indicates new bridge [click to enlarge]

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

University: Leith flood protection scheme and landscaping

Proposed landscaping within the university’s heritage precinct. The St David St footbridge will be extended. [graphic via ODT]

### ODT Online Wed, 24 Jul 2013
Registry stretch of Leith set for summer revamp
By Rebecca Fox
The stretch of the Water of Leith in front of the University of Otago’s registry building looks set to get a multimillion-dollar makeover this summer. Students, staff and visitors could soon be able to walk along grassy verges next to lowered banks of the river, from the St David St footbridge to the Union St bridge, if a design plan is approved at an Otago Regional Council committee meeting tomorrow.
It has been about seven years since the council and the university signed an agreement to work together to produce a plan to suit the council’s need for flood protection and the university’s need for an aesthetic look in front of its historic registry building.
The council had budgeted $5.4 million over the next 12 months for the work. The university and the council are each to fund half the cost of the aesthetic work.
Among the work to be endorsed by the committee is the lowering of most of the concrete wall on the east bank, extending the footbridge, cutting down the west bank and landscaping and footpath redevelopment.
Read more

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Related Posts and Comments:
27.5.13 Carisbrook and Leith flood protection
17.11.10 Leith Lindsay Flood Protection Scheme
17.5.10 Campus Master Plan
28.1.10 University of Otago Campus Master Plan

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Carisbrook and Leith flood protection

Received from Rob Hamlin.
Monday, 27 May 2013 1:03 p.m.

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Carisbrook on Sunday (26.5.13)

A picture of doomed dereliction – Innit? I tried to take photos of this last week, but the weather wasn’t good enough. I seem to recall that the comb lines in the manicured grass were going in a different direction then, indicating that further ratepayer-funded pampering has occurred this last week. What earthly reason can there be for the DCC to be spending money doing this on a structure that they claim they have a) sold and b) issued a demo permit for? Some seats are missing (but could be inside). The lights are gone, but Delta bought the last set anyway so why not ‘play it again Sam’?

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Otago Regional Council – Leith Flood Protection Scheme

001 ‘Sad Sacking’
The results of the equally seawall-like doomed attempts by the ORC and their representatives to establish a million dollar[?] lawn in the middle of winter in the bottom of a drainage channel occupied by a major flood prone waterway (the Leith). An act of simply heroic lunacy. This is the aftermath of the minor flood last week. The proto-lawn is covered in sacking further up the river, except for the bit next to the water – that’s now wrapped around the post in the foreground. Luckily it did not end up in the harbour – although many tons of silt presumably did. No doubt the ORC will be able to issue itself with a retrospective resource consent for this uncontrolled discharge into the environment.

002, 004 ‘Washed away’
For weeks now and presumably at great expense to the ORC, the contractors (Lund if the site signs are to be believed) have been laying down what looks like micropore mat, hexagon reinforcement, and what looks like a very expensive chicken wire plastic mesh combo – stitched together. They then planted grass on it. This can be seen growing feebly on the slope in 002. Alas, the minor flood that dislodged the sacking also gently sluiced out the soil and grass from the expensively-laid reinforcements on the level parts of the lawn laid (lunacy) right up to the edge of the river.

000 gives a higher angle shot showing the artistry of this now exposed and empty (of soil) soil stabilisation system, along with the feeble grass above it. I am not sure how they will reposition the soil into this stuff short of ripping it up and starting again. Presumably if all this expensive stuff was intended to stop soil coming out, it will be equally good at resisting attempts to put it back in again by mechanical means. Oh dear!

003 ‘Mighty defences’
Here we have what is actually supposed to keep the Leith in the straight and narrow from now on. This is the concrete shuttering for an incomplete part of the bank (this shuttering is now filled with shyte from the flood). The wall when poured (one hopes after clearing out said shyte) will be a worthy successor to the St Clair seawall – it is about 12 inches tall and 8 inches thick. It is plastered onto the top of (rather than onto the front of as with the seawall) the remains of its more substantial predecessor. The lawn (in the areas where it used to be there) starts directly behind it…

005 ‘Classy concrete placing’
The mighty foot-high defences take an interesting course in the photograph taken looking up the left-hand bank from the Forth Street Bridge. I do not know if this feature-bulge in the mighty wall is the outcome of a molar-like architectural design feature to increase the organic appearance of the site or if it’s simply a concrete shuttering quality control issue. It’s your rates money – you decide.

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

*Photos: Rob Hamlin (May 2013)

Stadium: public access to Water of Leith

The expensive oversight, Councillor stadium proponents, if you don’t consult your own resource management planners, early.

### ODT Online Tue, 29 Nov 2011
Stadium handover hitch
By David Loughrey

But when a map of the stadium showing the various lots to be transferred was shown to councillors at the meeting, Cr Wilson said the esplanade area running from Anzac Ave alongside the Leith should be owned by the city, with full public access all the way. Instead, it appeared to be going into DVL hands.

A sliver of windswept land that snakes alongside the Water of Leith has stymied the handover of Forsyth Barr Stadium, after a surprise decision by a Dunedin City Council committee yesterday. The issue of who owns the land, and whether the public has access, resulted in an extraordinary meeting being booked for next month to resolve the situation, and left finance, strategy and development committee chairman Cr Syd Brown “frustrated” it was brought up at the last minute. But Cr Kate Wilson, who raised the concerns, said she did not realise there was a problem until she began asking questions yesterday.
Read more

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Stadium extras

In a perfect world, after the realignment of SH88…

### ODT Online Tue, 30 Aug 2011
Work starts on stadium water traps
Construction of temporary weirs across the lower Water of the Leith next to the Forsyth Barr Stadium has begun. Three weirs are being trialled to improve the look of the concrete flood channel, described by some Otago regional councillors as “appalling”, by preventing the channel completely emptying out.
Read more

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Not to touch the Earth

Ok, misquoting The Doors’ Jim Morrison in his song by the same name from the Waiting for the Sun album, or indeed alluding to that architectural maxim of ‘touching the earth lightly’, there has been criticism of the new stadium designs by some that “The revised ‘building’ is a large ‘tent’, there’s no other word for it.” {Ian Smith, renowned old codger}. Others have suggested that the new stadium blocks the people from the Water of Leith and Waterfront, and for this alone it’s an affront to the people of Dunedin (whom apparently have this close connection to industrial landscapes and concrete encased waterways).

From the start I must remind you that the original intention for this blog, was to be critical of the design with the hope that they will come up with something more stunning. I was hoping that the likes of a Lord Foster could be tempted here to take up the design challenge – and then my cat awoke me from my daydream. I’m still not a huge fan of the design, but it has come a long way from the original renderings, and despite what others say, it does not destroy the connection to the Leith that others allude to. It is what it is, a sports/entertainment complex, with some nice subtle touches and appropriate dose of brutality giving a stadium what it should have, a sense of enormity and occasion.

So let’s have a look at the current surrounds of the two areas and buildings. What is so special about the two that one requires the virtual preservation of an ageing make-piece stadium, while a hands-off attitude to a polluted and inaccessible stream is deemed good for the people of Dunedin at the other site.

One an industrial wasteland where decrepit and bygone go hand in hand with walls and barbed wire fences, the other… well it’s exactly the same.

It’s a nice start at least, great graffiti near Carisbrook brings life to a very drab post industrial wasteland where scrap is gold, for both the Railway yards and the scrapyard, unfortunately not for the Otago Rugby Union.

Ok, that’s not fair, a railway over bridge is hardly Carisbrook’s fault. So what about the current stadium is worth keeping…?

Some have suggested that fuel storage tanks near the new stadium could serve as a target for terrorism. How about the huge substation within the grounds of Carisbrook, they make one heck of a mess if blown up, and I can’t see the flimsy wooden palings holding out much of a resistance.

Still it could be worse, there could be massive great factories with hollowed out shells of train carriages for the patrons to view.

If they need a bed after the game, the current site is more than accommodating.

Nobody could tell me that the current building is a picture of architectural brilliance that should be saved.

If only this was the Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou, alas.

There’s some nice shrubbery around the back (if you are a colonialist that is and gorse is your thing).

Still if the staircase to nowhere isn’t your thing, there are the doors to nowhere. These are both historic and an art installation, or indeed like the Tardis, if you could get through the incredibly small openings you’d be treated to the vast emptiness of under the stand.

They are quite cool really and are a link to the past.

People must have been much slimmer back in the day…

They are great though aren’t they…

There’s a little bit of architectural symmetry at the end of the stand.

Someone slapped on a pretty ugly impenetrable massive wall all the length of one stand. Yet another architectural add-on to the mishmash that is Carisbrook.

And yet another stadium style.

And another, I like this pic, could be any old grey English football stand from the lower divisions.

Still it’s important to see the advertising from across the stadium and in the railway yards.

Of course there’s the surrounding areas that aren’t industrial wastelands, there’s residential buildings.

So that’s the current rugby stadium, what about the new stadium’s surrounds and the current access to the Water of Leith. Remember many have criticised the stadium for showing a massive ugly back to the Leith, this is insulting to the people of Dunedin. So if you were to walk down the opposite bank of the Leith and look to where the stadium will be, this is the back you see at the moment.

Yeah these are so inviting and vibrant at the moment. Like the way they lightly touch the earth, they mould into the surrounding location and speak to the stunning architectural heritage that is Dunedin.

Looking at what will be the back of the stadium, at least this building plays with some iconic kiwi materials.

They have a shed out the back with a working toilet though, that’s handy…

There’s a pile of interesting rubbish, I like the cross-stitch Pluto dog.

You could even find parts for that troublesome motor of yours.

Some buildings only need a lick of paint here and there, and some wall panels, and a door not scorched and some glass, but that’s cosmetic really.

A little unfair I know, so back to the connection by the people to the Water of Leith. Presently if you were to travel down past Anzac Ave and turn into this area, the closest you get to the Leith here is via these walls. You can actually see right through if the doors are open.

Still it could be worse, there might just be massive concrete walls between the street and the Leith…

There’s somewhere to keep your ice-cream cold…

and more utility buildings with barbed wire…

some don’t quite speak industry or architectural heritage, somewhat utilitarian in their construct…

some speak a little more to the industrial area

some really speak to this…

some not only speak to the industrial past of this city, they come with smell-a-vision in the form of sheep-o-rama…

Actually this building has a proud history and has served the Otago region proudly. This is however the face it presents to the Leith…

There’s a nice wall to place some modern art on…

At least it’s facing the Leith, rather civic-minded of them to have that art facing the river.

I do like this view though.

The infamous connection to the Leith and the Waterfront is even stretched a little by the local yacht club. Nice views of the Peninsula Hills though….

Some have objected to the ‘University Creep’ that they see worrying. Looking back up the Leith, this is how the University and Polytechnic look and connect to the Leith. At least it’s more alive.

There’s some classic University buildings that at least speak to the concrete architectural heritage of the New Zealand modernist movement.

Not all the buildings surrounding the Leith speak to the surrounds, however they have become target practice for the Giant Albatross that make Dunedin such a famous tourist trap. This is what you see if you were walking to the new stadium across the Leith. Some buildings just talk to the surrounds more than others eh?

Others have just been peppered by smaller seagulls…

There’s a reference to the transport history of Dunedin…

and reference to a bygone era of industry.

But in the end it too is a none too hospitable industrial landscape and not the mytical connection to the Water of Leith or Waterfront that we have been warned that will be lost if we build the new stadium.

Could be worse, the stadium could be destroying thriving industrial land.

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Posted by Paul Le Comte