A $7 million parking building tucked behind the ANZ Centre on the corner of Cameron Rd and Elizabeth St is three months away from easing the growing demand for all-day car parks around the CBD and early avenues.
But Tauranga City Council will soon be relocating hundreds of staff into the office building that opened a year ago on the corner of Cameron Rd and Third Ave.
The council has revealed it was spending $1.6m to fit out half of the 8000sq m building whose anchor tenant was Inland Revenue. The building offered 122 car parks for a potential workforce of 600.
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Many of the council's 588 full-time staff have been working in the former Westpac building at the bottom of Devonport Rd since toxic mould was found in the leaky downtown Civic Building.
The next move to 306 Cameron Rd in late February was because of a $50m redevelopment of the Devonport Rd building - prompting speculation about the pressure staff could put on all-day parking in the blocks around Third Ave.
The 280-space private parking building under construction in First Ave West still had two of the five floors available for lease.
Richard Cashmore, chairman of the development company Troop Investments, said they were leasing to corporates, not individuals. Quizzed on whether the council had been approached because of the expected influx of staff cars into the area next month, he declined to comment.
Tauranga Mayor Greg Brownless said the council did not provide off-site car parks to staff who commuted in their own vehicles.
''If anyone was really keen, they could arrange it themselves. I don't think the council would negotiate on behalf of staff.''
Brownless said there was a shortage of parking in the CBD and he welcomed initiatives like Troop Investments.
''It's fantastic to see the private sector taking the burden off ratepayers.''
Cashmore said two of the three floors leased out so far were to clients of the ANZ Centre, so it followed that the building would relieve pressure on all-day parking in the area, including council's downtown parking buildings.
He said the project had fallen behind schedule because of the wet winter and the discovery that the area had once been the site of an old sawmill. They had encountered some big logs and asbestos, bones that turned out to be from sheep, and artesian springs.
''But we are over the worst of it and into the home straight.''
With the foundations in, the rest of the building went up fairly quickly, like a Meccano set, and he expected the carpark would open at the end of April.
The council expected to be in 306 Cameron Rd until 2021 when the new administration building in the Willow St civic precinct was proposed to open. However, this was still subject to public submissions on the draft 2018-28 Long Term Plan.
A critic of the council's downtown parking strategies, retailer Bill Campbell, said the new private parking building would ease pressure on downtown car parks, but not noticeably.
''We want 1500 car parks. We are under extreme pressure and anything would help.''
He suspected that a lot of the 550 spaces in the council's planned Harington St parking building would be leased, including to council staff whose new administration building would be next door.
Council transportation manager Martin Parkes said the Harington St building was out to tender and due to open early 2019. He said the council could use some of the parking spaces ''but not all that many''.
Campbell said he had been offered one of the car parks surplus to council requirements in the basement of Kingsview Towers, once the shift to Cameron Rd took place. Council fleet cars would use parks in the basement of 306 Cameron Rd.
Parkes said the council leased 53 car parks in Kingsview, with 34 surplus spaces being offered to the market. The 53 leases expired in three years.
Tauranga's revolving civic administration offices since toxic mould discovered
December 2014 to February 2015: Staff dispersed to temporary safe areas.
February 2015 to February 2018: Commercial leases eventually centred on 2 Devonport Rd.
February 2018 to 2020-21: 306 Cameron Rd