By ANNE GIBSON
A entry-old villa with a mud-drenched carpark alongside National Women's Hospital is the HQ planning Auckland's new hospital.
Aside from touring the wards, there could be few more graphic illustrations of the years of neglect and the desperate need for the nearly half a billion dollars being spent to
upgrade Auckland's hospital services.
The first building in the overhaul is about to open. Grafton's new laboratory and mortuary, LabPlus, also referred to as the pathology laboratory, will be finished in just four months. The hole - 40,000 cu m of earth - is being dug for the new acute hospital and when building is in full swing 1600 construction workers will arrive on the site. The application to build the nine-level 710-bed new hospital at Grafton is about to go to Auckland City Council for approval.
Auckland Healthcare will apply for resource consent to build the hospital at the end of this month. It will do this on a notified basis. Going about it this way will give the public the maximum chance to have an input, says Dr Nigel Murray, general manager planning and development.
He acknowledges the building will be over the height restrictions for the area, although it will be only half as high as the existing hospital.
While that application goes through the system, resource consent has already been granted to excavate.
It will take 24 weeks to finish digging the hole, which Dr Murray estimates will be a third as deep as that dug for Sky City.
Earthmoving contractors Vuksich and Borich are removing the dirt to the contractors' own site as well as the Lunn Ave site at the Winstone quarry at Mt Wellington.
Fletcher Construction has been appointed the preferred contractor for the new acute Grafton hospital. It is also involved with the redevelopment of the Winston quarry, with Winston a Fletcher subsidiary.
The earth not needed on the Grafton site is being trucked across to Mt Wellington to help in the stabilisation and re-contouring of the former 105ha quarry. Eventually the quarry will be turned into Lake Park, a new suburb with 700 houses and offices for 1500.
Meanwhile, Mainzeal Property & Construction has nearly finished building LabPlus at Grafton. The roof will go on next month and the lab is expected to be finished by September. Early this month, Mainzeal won the contract to build the first of two large new carparking buildings at Grafton. The two buildings will have more than 2500 carparks and be run by a commercial parking operator.
The $11 million, five-level carpark will have space for 1036 cars and incorporate two helicopter landing pads on the roof and special lifts to accommodate hospital beds and equipment.
This carpark will be linked to both the Starship and the new acute hospital.
Mainzeal began building the first carpark in mid-June and is due to finish in March next year.
All up, $340 million is being spent on the Grafton site, with the rest of the money going to upgrade Green Lane.
The outgoing National Government approved the $423 million revamp of Auckland's hospitals in May last year. It involves:
* Building a 710-bed acute hospital on the Grafton site. Yet to be named, this is designed to bring together the in-patient services of Auckland, Green Lane and National Women's hospitals. It will be 70,575 sq m - about twice the size of St Luke's Shopping Centre.
* Turning Green Lane into an outpatient facility for day-stay patients. All its coronary services will be transferred to Grafton. Green Lane becomes a walk-in/walk-out facility.
* Refurbishing the existing Auckland hospital tower block for administration, research, conferences and some expansion of University of Auckland Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences.
* Building two commercial carparks on the Grafton site for 2500 vehicles and a new carpark at Green Lane.
* Building a new $20 million laboratory and mortuary building at Grafton - the first building to go up and due to open in four months.
* Building a new acute mental health facility to replace the Conolly Unit at Grafton.
* Improving Starship Children's Hospital.
By ANNE GIBSON
A entry-old villa with a mud-drenched carpark alongside National Women's Hospital is the HQ planning Auckland's new hospital.
Aside from touring the wards, there could be few more graphic illustrations of the years of neglect and the desperate need for the nearly half a billion dollars being spent to
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.