A central Wellington carpark building badly damaged in the Kaikōura earthquake and boarded up for nearly a decade is set to reopen within weeks, thanks to a $30-million-dollar strengthening project.
The reopening of the James Smith carpark building will eventually see 700 carparks returned to the CBD after years of gripes over a lack of inner-city parking.
The 1980s building on Wakefield St closed after sustaining significant damage in the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake.
It was purchased by Wellington property mogul Eyal Aharoni for a reported $18.5m in 2017, making his total investment in the building to date $48.5m.
Since then, Aharoni’s Prime Property Group have been working to restore the nine-storey carpark building.
His son Guy Aharoni, a development manager for the company, took the Herald through the site ahead of the first 100 car parks on the ground floor opening to the public next month.
Aharoni says the carpark is a “key piece of infrastructure in the Wellington CBD”, situated across the road from the Michael Fowler Centre and Town Hall, also currently being restored due to seismic problems for a hefty $329m.
Aharoni believes its phased reopening will help bring life and activity back to this part of the city.
“It’s extremely needed, there’s been a lot of outcry in the public domain for more parking and hopefully the punters are there to make use of these car parks when they come back online”, he said.
Wellington City Council currently provides approximately 32,000 car parks in the CBD, 2200 of which are on-street metered parks, a council spokesman said.
In recent years an estimated 100 metered on-street parks have been lost in the CBD due to roading changes like the construction of cycleways.
Across the capital around 1650 parks are thought to have been lost in the roll out of a new cycleway network including in suburban centres like Karori, Island Bay, Kelburn, and Aro Valley.
Additional parks on Courtenay Pl are on the chopping block with the Golden Mile project.
The James Smith strengthening project, which began in 2023, has included removing tonnes of concrete from the building to reduce its structural load, pouring new foundations, erecting new walls, and “temporarily propping the building up” to bring it up to 100 percent of the national build standard or NBS.
The “iconic” spiral ramp in the building will remain, Aharoni said, and has been detached from the rest of the structure so it will move independently in a future quake.
Workers are currently painting the bottom levels to remove years of graffiti from vandals who had broken into the building while derelict.
Some of the building’s cherished wall murals, those untouched by vandalism, will remain in the new look site.
The James Smith carpark is one of a series of buildings on Wakefield St owned by Prime Property which suffered damage in the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake.
The adjoining Amora Hotel closed in 2017 for repairs and Pringle House directly next door, where the Greater Wellington Regional Council used to be located, has been closed since the 2013 Seddon earthquake.
A man was critically injured when he fell three floors down a stairwell in the abandoned Pringle House last year.
The bridge over Wakefield St connecting to the Amora hotel is set to be demolished over the coming days by Wellington City Council.
As well as the extensive physical works to the carpark building, it will also see new technology installed, with the hopes a licence plate recognition system will make the experience more seamless for those using the carpark.
Users registered with the Prime Parking app will be able to drive in and out being charged online without using paper tickets or dealing with payment kiosks.
The “advanced” technology is thanks to Prime’s collaboration with local software company Eyegate, Aharoni said.
The company operates three parking buildings across the city, on Cable Car Lane, Stout St, and Gilmer Terrace.
The rates for parking in the James Smith building can not be shared yet, a spokeswoman for the company said.
The company’s other sites charge between $4 and $6 per half hour.
In recent years Prime Property has also purchased the closed quake damaged Reading Cinema complex and Amora Hotel.
The company plans to reopen the Reading complex next year with the chain as its key tenant operating a similar number of cinemas as when it closed in 2019 due to being earthquake prone.
The Amora Hotel is also undergoing redevelopment, with Prime Property planning a “modern hospitality offering” for the site.
Ethan Manera is a New Zealand Herald journalist based in Wellington. He joined NZME in 2023 as a broadcast journalist with Newstalk ZB and is interested in local issues, politics, and property in the capital. Ethan can be emailed at ethan.manera@nzme.co.nz.