In the almost three years I have been working for the Dunedin City Council, many stories and opinion pieces have been devoted to the good, the bad and the ugly aspects of the project to upgrade the 80-year-old town hall and the associated conference facilities of the Dunedin Centre.
Having been part of the team working on this project over that period, I have often found myself sitting in meetings representing the council and listening to the views of the public.
One of the things that became very apparent during this long, and eventually fruitful, process was that the views of the public were not united and homogeneous and the factual information around the project and why the council was embarking on it, was not always widely understood.
It was for this reason that in 2008 the council decided to retrace its steps in this process, revisit the project and carry out more consultation, including holding dedicated focus groups and public meetings to explain why the project was necessary and to enable the wider views of the community to be identified and assessed.
Through this process a consensus on a preferred option was arrived at and the plans emanating from that have recently been unveiled to the public.
During 2008, it also became clear that the Dunedin Town Hall evokes affectionate, passionate even, feelings among the city's residents and for many more with links to the city now living elsewhere.
For many it has been the backdrop for important milestones in their lives, whether it was a 1950s town hall tea dance and romantic outcomes which owed their genesis to those still-remembered days, or fond memories recalled by a graduation ceremony for themselves or a family member.
For these, and a host of others, it is more than just a building or a place that carries out an important role in the economy of the city: it has become an icon and a valued part of the community and for that reason, people hold strong views about the future of the complex.
I am neither an architect nor a heritage consultant. I am, however, a trained and qualified town planner. I underwent my planning education in the UK, which has a strong legislative planning regime and considers all of the influences on urban form, including the interaction of people and their urban environments.
To me it quickly became apparent that the town hall development needed to consider not only the internal requirements of the users, but also that it needed to reassert its place in the urban environment, as was the case before it was overshadowed by the central library and hemmed in by Harrop St and an unprepossessing car park which has devalued the pivotal relationship between the cathedral and the town hall.
Assoc Prof Diane Brand (formerly of Auckland University, and more latterly of the architecture department of Victoria University in Wellington), in peer reviewing the original design commented on the fact that Harrop St was currently "functioning as a pedestrian-hostile shortcut with no active edges or physical protection for pedestrians, but that it had the capacity to become an intimately scaled, culturally important and environmentally protected public space. Such a space should be made available to the people of Dunedin."
Through our extensive consultation, and by undertaking the peer review work outlined earlier, it is my view that the new designs for the complex achieve this aim.
They also pay attention to the numerous opinions of those within the architectural profession and others that any new extension to the complex should be smaller than the originally conceived extension and should be located on Moray Pl, not on the Harrop St facade. Or, in the words of Prof Brand, "that any new addition to the north facade of the town hall be limited in scale relative to the principal facade, of minimal depth so as not to compete with the mass of the original building, and materially transparent".
I believe these objectives have now been achieved, and the principle that consultation should be carried out in good faith has also been met.
The result appears to be one that the community should be able to live with comfortably - maybe, even, applaud. However, in conclusion it must be said that the objective was never to produce a design which would be universally loved - indeed this would almost certainly be an unrealistic and unachievable goal.
And what will we get for all this effort - and money?
A long overdue interior face-lift for a much loved city amenity; an eye-catching new entrance on the main street; a rationalisation of the spaces and facilities within the existing complex; a welcome addition of meeting spaces within the envelope of the Municipal Chambers building; the preservation of world-class performance venues; a new people space in Harrop St which will protect the vista while dramatically improving what is currently a drab and uninviting service lane; and, perhaps most important of all, an opportunity to maintain for future generations the gift to the city from our forefathers that's become one of one of New Zealand's iconic meeting places. That will be some achievement and I know we can do it.
- Kate Styles is general manager, strategy and development, at the Dunedin City Council.
