Generator's big move will close Victoria St

Traffic will be diverted around Victoria Park tonight as Transport Agency contractors lift a large generator into a historic kindergarten building. File Photo / Natalie Slade

Traffic will be diverted around Victoria Park tonight as Transport Agency contractors lift a large generator into a historic kindergarten building to provide emergency power to their new motorway tunnel.

Victoria St West between Beaumont and Halsey Sts will close from 9pm to 5am so the 13.5-tonne generator, about the size of a shipping container, can be installed in the long-disused Campbell Free Kindergarten building.

It was erected in 1908 as Auckland's first kindergarten.

The generator will be housed in an annex between the motorway viaduct and the kindergarten, which the Transport Agency is restoring under an agreement with the Auckland Council.

One lane of the viaduct will also close during the installation.

In return for being allowed to use about a third of the kindergarten's floor space for stand-by plant for tunnel operations, in case of any interruption to mains power supply, the agency will return two former ground-floor classrooms to the council for use as public meeting space once restoration is complete.

The agency is also preparing to return the historic Birdcage Hotel next week to its original position across Victoria St from the kindergarten.

It will sit above the motorway tunnel's southern portal.

After months of preparations, contractors took two days in August and September to slide the 740-tonne building 44m back on runway beams from the site it had occupied for 125 years.

The "cut and cover" tunnel was dug through the hotel's former basement.

The two moves are costing about $2.5 million within the $406 million budget for the one-way northbound tunnel and widening of the motorway from its northern end to the harbour bridge.