Wanganui's historic opera house is one step away from getting a structural makeover to bring it up to earthquake-strength standards.
Wanganui District Council is being asked to sign off on a $750,000 upgrade that will make the Royal Wanganui Opera House 34 per cent of the National Building Standard - a level acceptable to regular users of the wooden building.
The recommendation comes from the council operations and reporting committee which met this week. Anticipating the work will be done next year, the opera house has stopped taking bookings for between June and August 2015.
The council has written $20 million into its 10-year plan and allocated $5.9 million of that to strengthen some of its buildings over the next three financial years.
The opera house is one of 52 earthquake-prone buildings the council owns, and assessments done after the Christchurch earthquakes estimated the potential cost of upgrading all those buildings at $20 million.
But as government policy on upgrades has become clearer, council officers believe costs could reduce by as much as 50 per cent. Another reason for a drop in costs is the assumption that buildings will need to be upgraded to between only 33 per cent and 67 per cent of the standard to still be safe.
The council commissioned a detailed seismic assessment of the opera house and that found the building had a rating of just 10 per cent, and upgrading the building to 100 per cent would have cost $2.7 million.
Leighton Toy, council deputy property manager, told this week's committee meeting that Wanganui was reckoned to be a place of medium quake risk and council policy was to strengthen buildings to not less than 34 per cent of the National Building Standard.
Regular opera house users had been canvassed and all said they would continue using the building if it was upgraded to a 34 per cent level, Mr Toy said.
The council has tagged $544,000 in its 2014-15 budget, with the remaining $206,000 being spent the following year.
The opera house is the first major council building to be upgraded. Next up are the Alexander Library and the Whanganui Regional Museum.
Mr Toy said engineering plans were being prepared but exact costs would not be known until the design was completed. However, the design would allow improving that seismic rating even further in future if other structural work was done.
Councillor Helen Craig suggested the council investigate funding options for this and other seismic upgrades. "The council needs to be robust in exploring these options. Others have been receiving huge amounts of funding from Lotteries, for example."
While the council has estimated spending $20 million on seismic upgrades, property manager Rowan McGregor said the landscape for the work was constantly changing "and it looks like we'll fly well under the figure ultimately".