A soap opera with dramatic financial consequences in playing out in Hamilton. It is a story of what happens when a bunch of amateurs try to run a city.
The council is planning on demolishing the famous Founders Theatre, which has been Waikato’s premier stage and concert venue for over fifty years. The decisions leading up to this are all too typical.
A safety report in 2014 identified a handful of maintenance items costing $116,350+GST to fix. This started a chain of events, largely due to a new and inexperienced council chief executive who had been appointed without having led another organisation.
As all good bureaucrats do, he responded by commissioning another report in 2015. This new report noted that most of the maintenance items had already been fixed, but it flagged an engineering issue that the consultant (a safety auditor, not an engineer) didn’t understand, and neither did the chief executive. In a panic, he closed the theatre – despite events having been booked and tickets sold.
It should be noted that previous reports by actual engineers did not regard the issue as a problem. A proper professional chief executive would know you need the right expert, not just any ‘expert’. A proper professional chief executive would have hired the right engineer to sort it out.
Around the same time, the council got an earthquake assessment done on the building. Like all good consultants, the assessors covered themselves by saying “further investigations” were needed. The chief executive panicked, assuming this meant the building was an earthquake risk as well.
All manner of reports followed in 2016 about what to do with the building, and the most outlandish proposal was a $20 million-dollar total refurbishment and extension including new function rooms and a larger stage. Somehow, the amateurs around the council table assumed this was the minimum cost to just fix the building.
By this time, council staff were aware of possible embarrassment. They needed to complete the “further investigations” and the outcome needed to provide something substantial about earthquakes. A detailed assessment was commissioned – except it wasn’t detailed because the council did not give the assessors the original architectural and structural plans. Apparently, these important documents had been lost. The assessors duly noted this absence in their report, concluded that there was probably a risk, but not enough to close the theatre, and noted that there was a 12 ½ year legal timeframe to fix it. And, as usual, they recommended further investigation, particularly covering certain structural details that the plans may have shown.
It took me a five-minute phone call to track down a full set of plans. These showed the structural details that the assessors were worried about had been designed properly.
The recommended further investigation was not done.
The council staff had what they wanted, and it was duly announced that the building was an earthquake risk. The unrelated pointless closure was justified. And it remained closed because the public were not told about the 12½ year timeframe.
When local structural engineers started asking questions and making unsolicited expert comments, maintenance and security were slashed to ensure the building would deteriorate enough to make re-opening in the meantime impossible.
The affair took a dramatic turn in 2018 when a proposal came out of the blue for a brand-new privately-owned theatre to be built in the city centre. It seemed like a gift horse. All it needed was $25 million of public money from the ratepayers. And $10 million or so from taxpayers. And draining millions from local public arts trusts meant to fund a wide variety of causes. And another million per year from ratepayers to operate it.
Polling showed 72% of city residents were against it, so naturally, the council went ahead with it. For the record, I like the new theatre, partly because, unlike many Hamiltonians, I can afford to go to it. Staff supported it because it was a perfect excuse to cover their failings. The old theatre could be demolished.
As it happens, the new theatre is currently running into difficulties with local iwi over urupa on the privately-owned land. But that is not stopping the demolition plans. In fact, they are proceeding with undue haste and little thought as to what to do with the site afterwards.
But this amateurish plan could be scuppered by a group of successful professionals and arts patrons. They have put together a solid proposal to save the building for around $5 million – a figure that makes a mockery of the $20 million cost that was fed to the public a couple of years ago.
I will watch with interest to see how council tries to weasel out of this one.
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