Civic centre to get new life as Gonville Centre for Urban Research in Whanganui

Frank Stark sits in The Changing Room, converted to a reading room and gallery. Photo / Laurel Stowell

Former Whanganui Regional Museum director Frank Stark has bought Gonville's former civic centre in Tawa St and intends to make it live again. Laurel Stowell reports.

In 1911 Gonville had a population of 6000 and was its separate entity. It had businesses such as Sovereign Woodworkers, a meatworks, a race track, a tram system and a railway siding.

It set about building a civic centre with a swimming pool, town hall and fire station at 37, 37A and 39 Tawa St.

But by 2006 Gonville had long been absorbed into Whanganui and none of those buildings were still used for their original purposes.

Potter Ross Mitchell-Anyon bought the former Gonville civic centre after it was closed by Wanganui District Council. Photo / Laurel Stowell

Whanganui potter Ross Mitchell-Anyon bought the buildings in 2015 and Stark bought them from him in March this year.

For Stark, Mitchell-Anyon is "the patron saint" of what he plans to do.

The complex has become the Gonville Centre for Urban Research, where Stark will do his Heritage Associates consultancy work and help fellows Anthonie Tonnon and Natalie Bradburn with their urban design projects.

He intends to turn the fire station into a dwelling, restore the grand frontage of the hall and hire it out and build a house on the former swimming pool site. The house will have a garden in the remains of the pool.

"We are aiming for something quite special," Stark said.

The garden will be partially available to the public and people will still be able to get water from a bore on the site.

It will be done by "zero budget repurposing" and without public funding.

Stark came to Whanganui to earthquake strengthen and redevelop Whanganui Regional Museum.

This new project will free him from the obligation to consult and report back that comes with public money.

He is on a mission to contribute to "the idea of Gonville" as a place in its own right.

"It's about not allowing Gonville to drop off what's urban in Whanganui," he said.

"It seems like a really really vibrant working part of the city which has fallen on hard times."

Its former town centre is a mish-mash of Edwardian, 1950s and 1970s style.

Repurposed metal objects decorate the front of the former Gonville Fire Station. Photo / Laurel Stowell

"It's not about preserving what's to my taste. It's more about the richness, the complexity that a place like Gonville has if it reflects all of the eras it's been through," he said.

Mitchell-Anyon had started developing the site with a plan in mind - perhaps a gallery in the hall. It is still in original condition, with tinted windows, a stage and kitchen and toilet additions at the back.

It was used until the early 2000s until the Whanganui council closed it, citing structural problems.

Those have been fixed by connecting the wooden walls together with cables. The hall can easily be made compliant and used as a yoga studio or for meetings, markets or gatherings.

"We will have a lovely community centre in Gonville again," Stark said.

Stark intends to put a house and garden on the site of the former Gonville Pool. Photo / Laurel Stowell

The leaking swimming pool was closed around 2005. Concrete block changing sheds had been added in the 1950s. Its wooden street frontage had been demolished and replaced by a gabled concrete structure in the early 1970s.

Stark's office is in that 1970s kiosk, and he has converted one of the changing sheds into a combined gallery and reading and research room, with a computer and 700 books.

An exhibition of Andrew Ross's photographs hangs from pegs that used to hold togs and towels.

The one-storey wooden fire station building is now studios, Stark said, and will be converted to a dwelling on a separate title. He'd like to put back its bell tower.

"The structure is part of the streetscape."

The hall and fire station are both heritage buildings listed in the Whanganui District Plan.

Residents will remember that the Gonville Pool used to be so busy you could walk across the water on the heads. Its noise "a hubbub of excitement, spiked by screams" could be heard streets away.

The kiosk and changing rooms could eventually become a shop or gallery. The house on the site will add a new design element.

Gonville Pool's former kiosk is now an office and meeting room for the Gonville Centre for Urban Research. Photo / Laurel Stowell

The Gonville Centre for Urban Design will take on two "fellows" a year. Tonnon is one of the first, because of his interest in public transport.

Natalie Bradburn has an architecture degree and designs bathroom ware in her cleancleanclean business. She wants to bring architects together for talks - possibly in the hall next door.

"I don't pay them but I offer my time to help them in their projects. They, in turn, become in some way associated with the centre," Stark said.

• Gonville Centre for Urban Research is open from 11am to 2pm, Wednesday to Friday. For more information, go to www.gcur.org.nz