KEY POINTS:
Onehunga's 96-year-old Aotea Sea Scout hall faces being moved to make way for Transit NZ's $330 million duplication of Mangere Bridge, which planning commissioners will begin considering this morning.
The prominent two-storey building is likely to be moved on rails to land to be reclaimed from Manukau Harbour, about 35m southwest of its Onehunga Harbour Rd site. It will be mounted over the harbour on piles, next to a replacement dinghy launching skid with public access.
Transit initially planned to move the building 70m north, along a widened Orpheus Drive, but the Scouts feared it would be obscured by an imposing new interchange carrying traffic over the Southwestern Motorway to Onehunga.
Scout group leader John Heaton said they also feared siltation and the spread of mangroves would make it difficult to put boats to sea.
Mr Heaton said the Scouts and the Historic Places Trust would have preferred the building, which was built in 1911 for the Manukau Yacht and Motor Boat Club, to remain as is. But he said the southwestern site appeared the next-best alternative and was favoured by the trust, although the Scouts were keen to inspect an engineering report to ensure the building would not be damaged unduly.
Transit's application for moving the hall, to be considered by the Auckland regional and city councils as part of the motorway duplication project at hearings starting today, says reconfiguring the interchange to avoid the building would not be possible without significant extra work in Gloucester Park and its volcanic tuff ring.
The Auckland Volcanic Cones Society already opposes the scale of planned work in the area, as do Onehunga residents among about 100 objectors, most of whom have asked to be heard by a panel also including Manukau City and Conservation Department appointees.
Residents are calling for the interchange to be buried or built on the eastern side of their suburb, to avoid worsening the impact of the existing motorway on the foreshore and pouring more traffic through busy streets.
An Auckland City urban design panel says compensation measures proposed by Transit appear "relatively minimal" against significant physical and social impacts on communities, and is calling for more public open spaces to be created in return.
Although Transit says temporary support measures will ensure the Scout hall remains "structurally robust and competent", Mr Heaton is alarmed that the agency wants to remove its windows in case of breakage.
"There is a worry it won't stay in one piece and we would dearly like to see the engineering report," he told the Herald.
A conservation plan prepared for Transit says that although the hall has limited archaeological significance, it has the maximum possible score in an assessment of heritage values.
Designed by noted architect John Park, who later became a three-term Mayor of Onehunga, it is recognised as New Zealand's oldest remaining yacht club building.
Apart from during World War ll, when the Army occupied it and allegedly damaged its dance floor, the building remained in the yacht club's hands until it moved to Mangere and the Sea Scouts took its place.
