KEY POINTS:
A six-storey jail is to replace the historic Mt Eden Prison and should take inmates by 2011.
The prison will be built alongside the existing stone-walled jail, which will become an administration block.
While funding has not yet been allocated for the redevelopment, Corrections Minister Damien O'Connor last night confirmed it would simply be a matter of when, not if, the new prison was built.
Corrections plans to call for tenders for the project next year. Once a cost has been established funding will be sought from the Government and it is hoped inmates will be in the new prison by 2011.
The redevelopment of the prison has been under way since 2004, when a report on the ageing structure revealed squalid and substandard conditions: leaking ablution blocks, insufficient light and lack of heating.
Yesterday Corrections lodged an application with the Auckland City Council for permission to redevelop the Mt Eden site, although resource consent is not needed because the area is already designated for prison use.
Corrections national property manager William Whewell said the existing prison building was well past its use-by date so preparations for redevelopment were important.
"Mt Eden Prison has successfully served the Auckland region for many years. However, its design was developed in the mid-1800s and the building is inconsistent with modern Corrections practices.
"While the department has been working hard to maintain the site in a safe and healthy manner, we have got to a point where incremental repair work is no longer economic ... "
The new plans have been designed to protect the existing prison as a historic place.
Two new accommodation blocks will be built alongside the historic prison, the first of which will be of six storeys and contain 300 beds. It will tower 3 1/2 storeys above the Southern Motorway but the design, similar in appearance to a multi-level office block, will mean motorists will not be able to see prisoners inside.
The second accommodation block will house a further 150 inmates and stand four storeys tall, the same height as the remand centre already on site.
The redevelopment also includes a new secure gatehouse entrance, a multilevel carpark and visitor centre.
Underground tunnels will link the accommodation blocks to the remand and visitor centres, allowing for safe and secure transport of prisoners.
Staff involved with the redevelopment project said the new design means people will no longer see barbed wire around the prison and the external fences will be more designed to keep the public out rather than prisoners in as they will be contained by the buildings' security design.
The prison's nearest neighbour, Auckland Grammar, has been consulted and is happy with the discussions.
National Party Corrections spokesman Simon Power said he hoped the redevelopment tender process would be handled differently from "failed collaborative working arrangements" used on four other regional prisons which caused a massive budget blowout. Those prisons cost $890 million.
* Executions were once carried out at Mt Eden. Walter Bolton - the last person to be executed in New Zealand - was hanged there on February 18, 1957, for murdering his wife Beatrice by poisoning her.
