Route row scuttled NG move

Plans to move a 117-year-old building away from Christchurch’s new stadium were scuttled because a new route and way of shifting it could not be agreed upon.

In March, NG building owners Roland Logan and Sharon Ng revealed that the building would not be moved and would instead be demolished, an end they had spent years battling to avoid.

The pair struck a deal with Toitu¯ Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand (Linz) in June 2021 to move the building 200m down the road, with a deadline of June 16 this year.

An indicative plan for the method, route and time frame of the move was included in the deal with Linz, but Andy Smith, who worked as a project manager for the NG building shift, said it was soon found not to be optimal.

By November 2021 there was a new plan, which Smith said would have used large trailers to move the building. This required a different path to what was originally agreed with Linz, instead needing to cross more of the land set aside for the stadium.

The move would have taken just two to four hours, far quicker than originally planned, Smith said, arguing that it was a feasible proposal that just needed the green light.

But that approval never came. ‘‘We tried everything we could to make it work,’’ he said.

Smith said the NG team tried to pursue a meeting with the stadium contractor to present the new plan, but he alleges that council staff told him this could not happen.

Asked about this, a Christchurch City Council spokesperson said the NG team met with a board member of the independent stadium company, and its chief executive David Kennedy, in February.

Kennedy said in a statement the NG team never asked to meet the contractor.

He said that during the meeting, held in February, he outlined the ‘‘programme and cost escalation issues’’ that could affect the stadium because of the proposed new route for the move.

Kennedy also said he wanted ‘‘a more detailed methodology and programme’’, but this never came.

The stadium board told Linz in early March that the new route ‘‘cannot be accommodated’’ because of ‘‘contractual requirements’’ and ‘‘critical path activities’’ happening in the area, according to an internal Linz email obtained under official information laws.

The email warned that when the NG building owners were told of this, ‘‘there is potential for this to create negative media or political pressure’’.

Other released emails show that in January, Linz’s lawyer, John Buchan, warned the NG building owners that the original route for the building had to be ‘‘strictly adhered to’’, because the stadium land would be handed over to the contractor in March.

By March, time was running thin.

The original deal between Linz and the NG building owners meant the move had to be done by June 16.

If the building was still there then, the Crown would have had the power to knock it down. The city council also would have faced significant contractual penalties with its stadium contractor.

Logan and Ng made the call to demolish the building, and Land Information Minister Damien O’Connor was briefed on the situation on March 18.

‘‘The owners have found relocation of the NG building to be impossible to achieve,’’ his briefing said.

It noted that the demolition ‘‘may not be supported by the Christchurch public and the media’’.

The plans for demolition were revealed publicly on March 25.

In a media release at the time, Logan said he was thankful to the stadium governance board, but he hit out at ‘‘stadium design and construction arrangements that preclude flexibility’’.

Demolition work was continuing on the building this week.