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Rodney Local Board members, from left, Warren Flaunty, Thomas Grace, Greg Sayers and Beth Houlbrooke inspect the Warkworth Town Hall on November 30 after project overruns of $1.2 million.
The cost of restoring the Warkworth Town Hall has jumped by $1.2 million and the work has been scaled back in a bid to keep the project within budget.
The extra costs are the result of a number of expensive obstacles unearthed during the restoration. Contractors have found unstable ground under the hall and the yet-to-be-built gallery/foyer, including a sinkhole, a tree and a stream, and as a result, significant strengthening work is required.
Project operations manager Steven Davey says about $400,000 of savings have been made to stage two of the project, which involves building a new gallery/foyer area adjoining the hall.
The remaining $800,000 is likely to come from Auckland Council’s Central Risk Fund – a pot of money used to fund unexpected costs in projects, drawn from a five per cent contingency on all Council works.
A second staircase, which was to be built in the new foyer area, has been removed from the design. The upstairs gallery area will now only be accessible from the existing staircase in the old hall.
A smaller lift will also be installed, which will only provide wheelchair access to the second floor. The original plan allowed for a lift which could hold about 10 people.
But the biggest savings will come from scaling back the roof design in the new gallery space. Instead of an apex-shaped roof, it will be a cheaper flat roof.
“There need to be cost savings,” Mr Davey says. “We had a really fancy, quite expensive roof line. With these changes we are not losing any functionality, but we can make significant savings.”
It seemed like it wasn’t just the hall that was on unstable ground at the Local Board’s business meeting last month, as the entire project came under fire.
Board members grilled project site manager Andrew Hollis about why issues with the hall weren’t discovered earlier.
Member Steven Garner said if the true cost of the project were known earlier, the community might have decided to knock down the hall and start again.
“The risk of the project going over budget was raised time and time again,” Mr Garner said. “If there had been a further $1.2 million available when we were deciding the fate of the hall we could have got a new facility in that space. Had we known the extra costs, it may have changed the wider community’s appetite for this work. I’m really disappointed.
“The Local Board wasn’t aware of the issues until the budget was blown out of the water. If it we had known earlier, the pin could have been pulled.”
Mr Hollis said a number of ground tests were undertaken before work started, but the samples didn’t uncover the poor foundations.
“We just got a snapshot of the ground, but that’s the best you can do without digging out the entire site,” Mr Hollis said. “A lot of the issues were also underneath the hall and inaccessible.”
The unstable ground was part of a seam which ran through Warkworth.
“Half the building sits on what used to be a gully, which drained water down hill into the Mahurangi River. There’s a band through Warkworth down to the river and over time the gully has been filled with pretty poor material.”
Contractors became aware of the issues in November, when about $600,000 of work had already been done.
Mr Davey pointed out the Category 1 heritage building couldn’t be knocked down, but Mr Garner said the status could have been changed.
Board member John McLean said the building had been damp in the past, and was concerned the basement area would remain damp, even after the upgrade.
Mr Hollis said a lot of work had been done lining the walls of the hall and building thicker foundations to prevent water seeping in, but the project was limited by the design of the building.
“Without spending considerably more we can’t guarantee it will not feel damp ever again.”
Board member Thomas Grace came to the hall’s defence.
“It would not have looked pretty if Council bowled a heritage building with the nearest digger. We are well into the project. I’m highly impressed with what’s been done.”
The contract for stage two of the project was expected to be signed by Canam Construction next month with work starting in March. Both stages are scheduled to finish in August.
Stage three of the project, which includes the fit out of the hall, is dependent on funding and no start date has been set.
