Rudman's city: Civic haunted by its smelly past

By BRIAN RUDMAN

In the dying days of the old Civic Theatre, the head usher's final task before patrons were let in was to light as many incense sticks as possible.

The curious were told it was to add ambience. The truth was, it was a device to mask the fetid smells bubbling up from the ailing sewerage system.

A $42 million refit later, such odours were one part of the authentic Civic that not even the most ardent of conservationists wanted preserved.

History, though, has a way of refusing to be buried. And despite kilometres of new sewers and drains, and acres of concrete, the lavatorial smells of old have returned to haunt the place.

On one occasion in March the visitation was so malevolent that New Zealand Dairy Foods, which was hosting a product launch in the Wintergarden, got a "fairly significant" refund from The Edge.

"It was like rotten eggs," says the disgruntled general manager of marketing, Kevin Bowler. "You couldn't not notice it."

Rushing to the rescue were Edge staff with aerosol air fresheners. The MC helped with some impromptu lavatory humour.

"Nevertheless, I think our customers and sales people would have enjoyed it a lot more if it hadn't been there," said Mr Bowler.

"Unless they can get it fixed it certainly wouldn't be a venue we'd ever use again."

Also suffering are the patrons of the Sunday night old-time dance nights in the Wintergarden. Over the months they've learned to avoid the main trouble zone, which they say is to the right of the room when you face the bar.

But the smell is sneaky. Spokesman for the Civic Wintergarden Dance Club, Peter McGregor, says that last time it struck, it crept across the floor and rose up on the left side. "People laugh and carry on." Of course he can say that. After all, he confesses to having no sense of smell.

Someone who has is Anna Soutar, old-time dancer and signed-up friend of the Civic. "It is old cow-shed and school changing rooms and dirty people and it comes in waves. You don't mention it because you think it might be the person next to you."

Hot on the trail of the odour is Civic projects manager Terry Mansfield. His first encounter was in the circle in early February during a gala screening of, you guessed it, Gone With the Wind.

Did you cop that smell? asked a neighbour. What smell? he replied with false innocence. For he had, as had other staff before him, caught a whiff. But it was all so will o' the wisp that nothing was done. Not until March 7 when the phantom struck at the launch of Anchor's new milk bottle.

The hunt was on. The bottom of the lift shafts and elsewhere were checked and cleared. All eyes then turned to the ancient sewer/stormwater drain running between the Civic and the Bledisloe Building.

Supposedly separated, with sewage now running in a pipe within the old pipe, it at times contains dangerously high levels of sulphides. Obviously sewage is still getting in.

The theory is that vents running from the Civic's stormwater drains up to rooftop outlets were providing an exit route for this gas. On release it was being sucked into the Civic's rooftop fresh air vents, either via the air-conditioning or by convection.

Inside, small pockets of cooler, sulphide-tainted air, maybe only a cubic metre or two in size, "sort of wander through the building like a phantom," says Mr Mansfield.

Remedial action has included raising the vents on the roof and installing wet traps - similar to sink gully traps - on the two main stormwater pipes. This work was completed two weeks ago and since then the phantom seems to have gone to ground. Success?

Mr Mansfield is the first to admit how hard it is to nail a smell. But he lives in hope. I guess if this fails, there are always canaries.