KEY POINTS:
The controversial $250 million Soho Square project in Ponsonby has been sitting virtually idle for two months.
A front-runner for the main contract is no longer interested, a subcontractor does not know when work will resume and Colliers International has stopped marketing the huge commercial and residential project fronting Williamson Ave, Pollen St and Crummer Rd, just back from the Ponsonby Rd ridge.
What's more, the weather over the past two months has been perfect for excavating the remaining soil for five levels of underground carparking.
Marlin Group, the project's developers, insisted yesterday that it was business as usual at Soho.
Project director Paul Hudson said work was being done under different contracts. Brian Perry Civil, which had the first contract to excavate the site, would be back there next week.
Asked if Marlin had awarded the main contract, Mr Hudson said: "We are working through that."
Strategic Finance chief executive Kerry Finnigan, whose firm is helping to fund Soho, is upbeat about the work programme.
He believed the main contract had been let but was unsure to whom. Soho was moving to the next stage, he said: "You will see some people and machinery in the next four weeks."
Hawkins Construction chief executive Chris Hunter said the firm had no plans to build Soho after doing preliminary work on the main contract worth at least $125 million.
"We haven't lifted a pencil on that ... since November or December. It's been delay, delay, delay. There's not much been going on."
Tony Abraham, who works near Soho, contacted the Weekend Herald yesterday to complain about the unsightly pit dug last year.
Wade To, the Soho project manager for Brian Perry Civil, said this week that the civil contract was between programmes. Brian Perry quantity surveyor Harry Nortje gave a similar answer to the Weekend Herald on December 6.
Paul Dyson of Colliers said the company had stopped marketing Soho: "I know what's going on but I can't speak about it."
Bob Grove of Smith & Davies Cartage Contractors, which has been subcontracted to remove soil from the site, said he had not been told to resume work. He had expected to have trucks back at Soho in mid-January after the Christmas break.
Soho has had a chequered history since Marlin reputedly paid $23 million for the old DYC vinegar factory site. Two sets of plans have run into opposition from locals, including the area's art and fashion brigade.
After the first setback in 2005 for plans going 70 per cent over the allowable building limit for the site, Marlin came back with bigger plans going 80 per cent over it.
Objectors have called the project a "concrete jungle".
- Anne Gibson
