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A tug-of-war is emerging over a new home for Newmarket's century-old railway station building as it is about to be cut in two and removed to an undisclosed storage site.
Uncertainty over the feasibility of re-establishing the 50m building at a new railway station in Parnell, as preferred
by the Auckland Regional Council, means it faces going into storage next month until agreement can be reached on a permanent home.
That is worrying the Newmarket Business Association, which says Ontrack and the Auckland Regional Transport Authority should accept an offer by businessman and heritage enthusiastic Bob Macintyre to move it to a site beside the southern railway line, on the other side of a stone wall from his historic Greenlane home.
Mr Macintyre says that instead of frittering away millions of dollars of public money on interim arrangements for the building, which opened in 1908 but has to make way for a remodelled rail junction, the agencies should let him remove it for free.
Although it would not be fully open to the public at Greenlane, where he wants to place it on an old platform used by Ellerslie racing crowds until the 1950s, it would be turned into a creativity centre for artists and craftspeople and visible to motorway traffic as well as train passengers.
But Mr Macintyre said the opportunity for him to move it by rail for under $100,000 - compared with a $5 million Government allocation to Ontrack for managing it into an uncertain future - would be lost once it went into storage as there was no road access to his site.
Ontrack has already dismantled the station's large and distinctive verandas, under the supervision of conservation architect Dave Pearson, ready to move it in two sections next month to a secure location which it will not disclose for fear of attracting vandals.
A temporary tin roof will be built over it for protection from the elements, and Mr Pearson said its three chimneys would be dismantled brick-by-brick to ensure it could be re-assembled to its original state.
Even so, Newmarket Business Association general manager Cameron Brewer fears that once the landmark building is put into storage, it will never re-emerge.
"It will be out of sight and out of mind," he said. "In a few years, no government, local politicians or officials will be game enough to spend more public money to try to breathe life into something that has long been forgotten."
Both the transport authority and regional council chairman Mike Lee promise not to lose sight of the station, and Ontrack says its funding allocation includes reassembling it once a permanent home can be found.
Ontrack spokeswoman Jenni Austin said the $5 million budget included blending it into a working station at Parnell, but if that proved impossible and it had to be moved elsewhere within "a railway environment", the cost would be halved.
Although Mr Macintyre believed he had won strong support for his site from a senior Ontrack official, Ms Austin said the transport authority was the final arbiter.
Authority spokeswoman Sharon Hunter said a Parnell site remained "absolutely an option", even though a decision on where to build a new railway station in the suburb was still several months away.
Mr Lee said he welcomed Mr Macintyre's interest, but he was determined the building should become part of a working station rather than being "marooned in suburbia."
