School building’s removal questioned

Correct procedures had not been followed by the Ministry of Education regarding the potential removal of a historic building from a central Dunedin school, and others at the school have not been respecting the school’s tangible history, a concerned parent says.

"They just want a new school at any cost," Matthew Schmidt said.

The school’s board of trustees and ministry staff said a decision about the 133-year-old heritage-listed infants’ building at Arthur Street School had not yet been made and guidelines were being followed.

The school was approved last year for a $10.9million ministry-led rebuild.

Mr Schmidt, who is a school parent and a former Heritage New Zealand employee, said the ministry was disregarding its own guidelines in its approach to preservation of the building.

"The infants’ building is a piece of Dunedin’s history. It needs to be protected at all costs and the ministry are not doing that," he said.

The Ministry of Education Historic Heritage Management Guidelines 2016, the Government’s Policy on Historic Heritage 2004 and the Heritage New Zealand Act 2014, which required the ministry to preserve historical buildings to the best of its ability, were not being followed, he said.

Adaptive reuse was the best way of preserving heritage buildings, reusing an existing building for a purpose other than which it was originally built or designed for, he said.

"The first step specified in these documents is adaptive reuse under the Crown, keeping the building in place and finding another use for it.

"Moving it off site which is what [the ministry wants] is not respecting the heritage of the building."

Mr Schmidt, whom the Otago Daily Times approached through another parent, said he had been corresponding with the ministry on the issue and had received a series of "non-answers" in response, he said.

A letter from ministry southern capital works programme manager David Hobern to Mr Schmidt said relocating the building would allow access to the general public to visit and appreciate the building’s history.

"... while it remains at its current location [it] is inaccessible to the general public."

Mr Schmidt said a comment in the letter that the school was not the original location for the building was inaccurate and showed a lack of knowledge on the ministry’s part.

Ministry infrastructure service head Kim Shannon said it was complying with its obligations.

"Again, no decisions have been made yet about the heritage infants building, but we would like to see it preserved.

"Over the last 18 months, we have been working with Heritage New Zealand to identify opportunities to relocate the building.”

An Arthur Street School board of trustees spokeswoman said the school was proud of its history as Dunedin’s oldest school, and had worked hard to protect the infants’ school building.

"That is why the school’s board of trustees worked through the process of getting category 2 heritage listing on the building to help preserve it."

She said final decisions were in the hands of the ministry.

"We believe that the history of that building is part of the history of Dunedin as a city of education.

"The relocation of the building provides an opportunity to tell that story to a broader public.

"We hope that with the support of Heritage New Zealand and the citizens of Dunedin the building will become a stronger voice for our shared heritage."

HNZ Otago Southland area manager Jane Macknight previously said HNZ was in discussions with the Ministry of Education for years.

"Buildings and their sites can be powerful signifiers of cultural values and the physical embodiment of stories for community, which is why adaptive reuse on site is generally favoured as a heritage result," she said.

emma.perry@odt.co.nz