That sinking feeling at Edmund Hillary village - who’s fixing it? Also today: Vital’s second split try fails, grounds dubbed ‘a bomb site’ after tree chop, and Britomart turns 20.
It’s a sobering experience to visit Ryman Healthcare’s sinking Remuera village centre hub, with site safety fencing covering the lower parts of the front and back of this huge Edmund Hillary block.
The village has a mountaineering theme but it’s beneath the ground where the focus is now.
It’s certainly scaling new “lows” to be examining how to fix a building that large to ensure the floor slab doesn’t keep moving and the ex-rubbish dump ground beneath stays stable.
Shackleton apartments, the village centre, rest home and Aoraki hospital are being lifted and a map provided to residents by Ryman outlines the areas where work is occurring.
This hub is surrounded by other blocks with equally alpine-themed names: Cook, Tenzing, Nepal, Everest, Mallory, Scott and Ross.
Ground engineering specialists Mainmark won the contract to fix the Edmund Hillary main block.
Mainmark has its name on the site safety board behind what used to be reception.
Chemicals stored in its giant white temporary shed include Golden Bay Cement, Mainmark pre-mix job perm, sulphuric acid, aqueous solution and Sika.
New Zealand’s largest listed retirement business acknowledged last week that re-levelling work had been under way for months, after ground settlement led to floors within the giant building becoming uneven.
Mainmark has established what looks like a mini-batching plant behind the shut village centre reception, a forklift carrying sacks of materials with pallets of non-shrink grout stacked one on top of the other.
Simon Rowland, Mainmark commercial manager, said the company began fixing the land on what had been a rubbish dump last May.
It was drilling through Shackleton’s concrete floor slab using percussion drills, he said.
Then, more than 1000 holes up to 3m to 4m deep were being drilled and grout pumped into those to re-level the slabs, “and a lot of the holes get re-evaluated and it depends on how the building reacts”.
So moving something this huge is a dynamic, evolving situation.
Mainmark repaired many Christchurch buildings after the earthquakes and says building floor slabs moving can cause more severe problems and become a safety hazard. Such problems usually indicate soil subsidence which can worsen and cause expensive, hard-to-fix damage to buildings. Even an uneven driveway at commercial premises can become fragmented and unsalvageable if left too long.
Rowland said the company was using the jacking off grout [JOG] technique.
“JOG has the ability to inject over large and complex structures simultaneously and precisely, ensuring accurate results. Over the years, Mainmark has successfully used JOG to re-level a broad range of structures by up to 300 mm, including heritage, multi-storey, and residential buildings,” the company says.
Structural damage and potentially huge expenses face people with sinking buildings and Mainmark says it has used this on huge warehouse floors which are even raised and re-levelled.
JOG operates via interconnected injection ports, managed by a central computer, resulting in an incremental and uniformly gentle system, Mainmark says.
The JOG grout is mixed in a central, computer-controlled, mixing plant.
The grout is then pumped through high-pressure hoses to 40mm injection holes drilled to the location and depth under a building’s foundations.
The number of injection points needed varies from dozens to many hundreds. Small quantities of the grout are injected into the ground where it quickly sets and creates a stable layer. The process is repeated hundreds of times, creating a solid foundation that eventually provides a lifting force that slowly, gently and evenly raises the structure or building, Mainmark says.
Simon O’Dowd, managing director of retirement village owner/operator Qestral, said a dispute which arose at Christchurch’s Alpine View village after a resident reduced mid-sized trees to stumps had been resolved.
But he regretted the way he handled the situation at a meeting with the resident and wrote a letter of apology to her.
The association in Christchurch got involved in the dispute and a representative of that entity sent O’Dowd’s written apology to the resident to Property Insider.
O’Dowd confirmed he wrote that letter and said in hindsight, he could have handled matters differently.
But the situation was unusual, he explained.
“Trees were cut to stumps half a metre out of the ground. There were quite a significant number of trees involved. The place looked like a bomb site,” he said.
The resident had left the village without Qestral taking any of the deferred management fee from her, effectively giving her a financial benefit. The resident was also paid out immediately in a fully and final settlement, O’Dowd said.
“We were conscious she wanted to buy another house. We paid her out the day she left”.
Matters were settled last year, he said but ex-resident Marg Kelsey, 80, said this week matters were never settled and she had been charged $5000 - the amount deducted from her original purchase price.
She had cut trees beside and behind the village home she had an occupation rights agreement on “because it was such a shambles”. The trees were a danger and a potential threat to her life, she said.
She complained about how O’Dowd behaved at the meeting between them.
She described difficulties including poor living conditions at the village, lack of support and that distressing encounter.
The association says: “Her story highlights the emotional and physical toll of her situation and the lack of adequate care and consideration from the retirement village management.”
The $1b+ urban regeneration Britomart project celebrates 20 years next month.
Peter Cooper’s visionary Cooper and Company leased and then revitalised 18 buildings around the waterfront and downtown city precinct.
Matthew Cockram is CEO of the business which says Britomart is the largest restoration of its type undertaken in this country.
Peter Cooper’s business has leased the buildings long-term to refurbish them, as well as developing new blocks which include the headquarters for EY, Westpac and the Financial Markets Authority on Takutai Square, and the 99-room Hotel Britomart.
He is based in Auckland and California’s Newport Beach.
Cockram told Property Insider: “There will be a lot more to come on the story of it all over the next few weeks leading up to and over the time of the event.
“On the timing, the development deed was signed in April 2004. We took possession on that becoming unconditional in June 2004 and paid the balance of the consideration 12 months later.”
Another Australian/NZ split, another day for Vital and another ditching of the proposal.
Last week, the healthcare property trust said it wouldn’t go ahead with a split creating separate businesses in the two countries after all.
About 80% of its assets are in Australia yet Kiwis may be disadvantaged if Vital split, it seems.
Unitholders generally supported the end state of the dual-listed trust but concerns were raised about transitional matters, including the ASX units issued, given current market conditions. The Canadian manager heard concerns about Vital’s NZX-listed entity’s scale, liquidity and index weighting.
So it ditched the proposal last Tuesday.
Back in 2020, the trust wanted to list on the ASX and that was also abandoned.
The manager wanted to separate Vital’s New Zealand and Australian properties into individual but stapled trusts primarily to remove inefficiencies for investors outside of New Zealand, it said back in February 2020.
That all raises the question: will Vital try again?
Anne Gibson has been the Herald’s property editor for 25 years, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.
The mānuka honey company has cut staff by around 70 to save money and reduce debt.