There's no shortage of quake-prone buildings in Wellington, including the Central Library, Town Hall and Amora Hotel. Photo / Mark Mitchell
There's no shortage of quake-prone buildings in Wellington, including the Central Library, Town Hall and Amora Hotel. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Owners of quake-prone Wellington buildings must be rubbing their hands with glee now it’s confirmed the city’s council is going to stump up millions to fix a cinema complex. A cinema owned by American millionaires.
Wellington City Councillors voted 9-7 on Thursday to plough ahead with the controversial ReadingCinema deal, which will see the council buy the land under the Courtenay Place building for $32 million.
Reading will use that money to redevelop the building that’s been closed since 2019 after an earthquake risk was discovered.
Reading’s annual rent would cover the council’s costs making it fiscally neutral to ratepayers. Reading could buy back the land for the council’s original purchase price within the first 10 years, meaning no capital gains for the council.
All in all, an incredibly generous offer from a cash-strapped council with no shortage of expensive problems of its own to fix.
The Reading Cinema building on Courtenay Place. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The deal, officially titled “city activation project”, is the brainchild of Mayor Tory Whanau who campaigned on being transformative for the city.
It’s a project she desperately needs to see through because Wellington is not in a transformative period. What it really needs is leadership with a laser focus on the basics - water infrastructure, public transport, housing.
She says Wellington can have both, and it’s clear why she’s chosen Reading to try to “activate” the city. It occupies a large area in a prime location and used to attract hundreds of people each day.
Whanau told those around the table on Thursday “if we don’t move this forward, we look like we are not about progress and I’m sorry, but that was not what I was elected to do”.
Wellington is a sea of boarded-up buildings, left by owners either unable to afford or not wanting to pay eye-watering strengthening costs. There are 572 earthquake-prone buildings in Wellington, and for 229 of them, the earthquake-strengthening deadline expires in three years.
Why should their owners not now expect similar treatment to ensure they reopen?
There are 572 buildings with earthquake-prone notices in Wellington of which 229 expire in 2027, creating a sharp peak. Image / Screen shot from WCC briefing
The council’s argument is any expectation the council will also help others fix their quake-prone building is mitigated by the fact the Reading Cinema deal is “unique”.
During Thursday’s presentation, one slide did address “precedent-setting concerns”. The potential impact of the deal was noted as financial pressure and future expectations.
Mitigation was simple: “This is a unique opportunity to revitalise the Courtenay Place precinct and does not set a precedent”.
But it does. Just a few doors down on Courtenay Place sits Molly Malones, the quake-prone Irish pub that’s sat empty since 2015. One block over sits the 192-room Amora hotel, empty since 2017. Would reopening them not also help revitalise the area? Will we be so blinded by Readings re-emergence we’ll no longer see the other eyesores?
Why should others have to cover all their own costs when “unique” Reading doesn’t have to?
During an interview on Newstalk ZB, Whanau told Heather du-Plessis Allan they were confident Reading would honour its end of the deal because “it’s in their best interest, they want to develop on this land, they want to get this building done because they’re committed also to the revitalisation of Courtenay Place”.
When pulled up on that point, given nothing’s been done to the building in five years, Whanau laughed with a “fair comment”.
Mayor Tory Whanau during Thursday's meeting. Photo / Mark Mitchell.
It’s worse than that. Reading has no plans to do anything to the boarded-up building for the next 11 years.
Councillor Ben McNulty tweeted he would have loved to have voted against the deal but didn’t. One reason was because apparently Reading’s “financial position” meant without council help they’d be “leaving the site to rot until 2035″.
Curiously enough, 2035 is when Reading’s earthquake-strengthening deadline expires. By then they have to fix it. It’s a deadline imposed by the council.
If the mayor and her councillors truly believe this won’t set a precedent with hundreds of others inevitably struggling to meet their strengthening deadlines in the coming years, they’re in for a seismic shock.
