Multi-million dollar repair of New Plymouth car park given go-ahead

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Simon O’Connor/Stuff

New Plymouth’s Downtown car park on Powderham St closed indefinitely in late 2020 due to earthquake risk.

Ratepayers will fork out nearly $5 million to strengthen New Plymouth’s earthquake-prone multi-storey Downtown car park.

The New Plymouth District Council (NPDC) narrowly approved the spend when they met on Tuesday to further debate spending more than double what had previously been recommended.

The higher price tag would bring its seismic rating up to 34 per cent of the New Building Standard before its long-term future was decided through the implementation of the Ngāmotu City Center Strategy.

The 268-space car park was closed in December 2020 when the NPDC determined the building earthquake prone after a seismic assessment showed it had a low national building standard rating.

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New Plymouth Mayor Neil Holdom led the charge to get the strengthening work done. (File photo)

Mayor Neil Holdom had previously led the call for more robust but expensive strengthening work and he was at the forefront of debate on Tuesday, urginglors to send a message to the community that they were not afraid to make tough decisions.

He believed bringing the car park up to a higher standard would encourage more growth and investment in the city and revealed council had been approached by developers looking for surety around the future of the car park.

“Let’s just get on and get it done,” he urged.

However, his enthusiasm to get the higher grade work passed was met by an attempted road block from several councillors.

Murray Chong, backed by Dinnie Moeahu, was upset a major property developer had walked away from any future work in the city center because the council had not entertained an option for him to buy a share of the car park.

“He spat the dummy and left,” Chong said. “This is scary people.”

Councillor Amanda Clinton-Gohdes then put a motion forward to stall any decision being made after she argued it was “too big” for the future of the central business district to decide the fate of the car park at this point of time.

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Councillor Amanda Clinton-Gohdes attempted to have a decision lay on the table for now. (File photo)

The motion was narrowly lost.

Time was then spent debating if they were a progressive council or not before councillor Stacey Hitchcock stood to defend the rights of commercial ratepayers in the city.

There was no way, she said, that they could front up to those ratepayers and tell them they had taken away the car park as they looked to develop the city center strategy.

She was also critical of any thought that the needs of one developer would be put ahead of all the business owners in the city.

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Councillor Anneka Carlson put forward other ideas of spending money on the Downtown car park. (File photo)

Councillor Anneka Carlson also entered the debate, proposing that the racecourse be used as a car park with shuttles or buses ferrying shoppers into the city.

In the end, Holdom gave a last impassioned plea to have the upgrade work passed, citing the Tauranga City Council’s poor handling of car parking to the decline of its central business district.

It was then passed nine votes to five.

The work is expected to take 18 months to two years to complete, but that would be dependent on supply and workforce availability.

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