PHOTO
A heritage advocate has criticised the "very, very curious use of statistics" he says has led to a car park being costed as the default plan for the former Sims Engineering building in Port Chalmers.
Bill Southworth, chairman of the nascent Port Chalmers Foundry Charitable Trust, urged Dunedin city councillors at a public forum this week to continue remediation of the site and not to accept the WSP Opus property development feasibility study that recommends demolishing all or part of the building to make way for car parking as a "fait accompli".
"It’s a report that from our perspective seems to pre-empt things," he said. "It says that they did a survey of the residents here ... they say most people wanted car parks. In actual fact, 20% of those who filled something out wanted car parks."
The building could have a multi-purpose community use as an art gallery, venue, or bike rental shop, he said.
Council property services group manager David Bainbridge’s public-excluded report to the DCC in December remains so due to commercial sensitivity.
Mr Bainbridge said this week the car parking plan — costing up to $1million to create up to 54 car parks — was not the council’s ideal option.
"If we thought a car park was a great idea, we’d move ahead with that. We don’t think it’s a great idea. But we have nothing to compare it to."
The feasibility study was accompanied by a contaminated land site investigation, but the council had not costed decontaminating the site to make it suitable for community use.
"The advantage of the car park is that it encapsulates all the contamination, because you’re just tarmacking over [it] ... the site was an industrial site for well over 100 years, so it’s contaminated with not just asbestos but other nasty stuff.
"Any changes you might want to do to the building internally, in terms of seismic strengthening, you may need to dig down and again you’re running into contaminated soil there. We can’t really put a cost on what it would be to remove all the contamination ... it depends on what you use the building for."
He said the building had no heritage status with Heritage New Zealand or the council; Mr Southworth said there were no parking issues in Port Chalmers.