From a glass and a-half, to half a block, demolition of the former Cadbury factory continues.
A team of about 20 staff from Christchurch demolition company Ceres, having already ripped, bashed and torn its way through most of the buildings on the adjacent Wilson Parking block, are now halfway through levelling the disused factory.
Work might not seem that advanced from the outside, but the mostly still standing facades on Castle and Cumberland Sts cloak substantial demolition work hidden behind them.
"Most people won’t notice how far we’ve got until those walls come down," new Dunedin hospital programme manager Mike Barns said.
"Things have gone pretty much according to programme and we have a very good contractor who we are very happy with."
"There are areas of historic interest near those silos and we have to be careful how we handle those . . . if it wasn’t a historic site and was a straight demolition we might get to those by late October or early November, but we have obligations to meet around heritage and artefacts."
Groundwork is expected to start on the Wilson site in January.
That block will be the home of the first stage of the two-stage $1.47 billion development, the Outpatient building.
The larger Inpatient building, which will be linked to the other building by a bridge over St Andrew St, will be on the Cadbury site.
Mr Barns said more than 8600 tonnes of material had been removed from both sites, 82% of which had been recycled.
"We have been trying very hard to recycle as much material as possible . . . we’re hitting our target,’’ he said.
More than 200 tonnes of asbestos waste had been taken from the site and a pocket of the carcinogenic material was being removed from the former Lighting Direct building
Environment Minister David Parker has agreed that the hospital project could apply for fast-track consenting.
Mr Barns said the Ministry of Health expected to lodge its consent application with the Environmental Protection Authority by September.
