Oamaru proudly recycles its old buildings

Press, 5 August 1983, Page 18

Oamaru proudly recycles its old buildings

Storv and nhotosFranhs bv

ALLAN GARDYNE

Oamaru is “leading the country in the recycling of old buildings,” says Councillor Helen Stead. “We have been recycling old buildings for years,” says Mrs Stead, who is chairman of the Oamaru Borough Council’s museum and art gallery committee.

In the 1880 s Oamaru was the eighth-largest town in the country. Although New Zealand’s economy was depressed, the citizens of the young town, with vision and courage, engaged the finest colonial architects to design gracious, dignified buildings which are still the hallmark of the town. The architects were fortunate in having available Oamaru’s creamy limestone, with its admirable building qualities. “We have the only nineteenthcentury business district remaining intact, and our present centralbusiness district is architecturally significant,” says Cr Stead. “Our slow growth rate has actually worked in favour of keeping all those buildings. We haven’t had growing pains such that we rushed out and bulldozed everything down and built new square boxes in aluminium and concrete.”

The Oamaru Borough Council was the first council in the country to establish a Heritage Fund. It was established last year. Each year the council will make some money available, matched by money from the Historic Places Trust, to enable people who own significant Oamaru-stone buildings to borrow money for restoration and preservation work. The money, lent for five years at 5 per cent interest, is for buildings with architectural or historical merit.

The council has set an example by spending $40,000 on renovating its buildings, including the old

Athenaeum (now the North Otago Museum) and the council building. The Mayor, Mr Reg Denny, says; “We are showing people what can be done.”

To anyone who complains about the cost of scraping down the century-old buildings, Cr Stead says it was the first time the museum building had been cleaned in 100 years. “Most buildings have to be painted every 10 to 15 years,” she says. The finest example of restoration work has been done on the centuryold Bank of New South Wales building. The gracious building with its magnificent Greek columns is now an art gallery — the Forrester Gallery — named after the late James Forrester, who was an architect and mayor of Oamaru. James Forrester and his father, Thomas Forrester, designed many of Oamaru’s architecturally significant buildings. A $lOO,OOO bequest from James Forrester provided the nucleus of the funds for the art gallery, but much more was needed. Some $250,000 has been spent on refurbishing and strengthening the building to comply with earthquake regulations. It has come up beautifully,” says Mr Denny, proudly, “and there has not been any rate input into it yet. We did face a shortfall which we haven’t quite met yet, but we are investigating ways of dealing with that.”

Money has come from the New Zealand Lotteries Board, a Government grant, bequests, and donations — including the carpet, a centennial gift from Alliance Tex-

tiles, Ltd.

The council arranged a deal with the Bank of New South Wales in which the council sold the bank a leasehold section in another part of town, and bought the old build ing.

The Masonic Lodge has recently renovated its Oamaru-stone building, without using council funds, and St Paul’s Church has made a start and is investigating using the Heritage Fund. The Heritage Fund idea has attracted interest elsewhere. Auckland is now negotiating a similar arrangement with the Historic Places Trust, and representatives from Arrowtown have visited Oamaru to study how the system works.

In the town’s old business area, the Customs building, which was under threat of demolition, is being restored by the Historic Places Trust, which has replaced the roof and begun work on the outside.

A tenant is being sought, and Cr Stead says a “light industry” has shown an interest.

Most of the other buildings in the Tyne Street-Harbour Street area, which was the town’s central business area in the late nineteenth century, are used as warehouses. The man who owns most of them is one of the town’s major employers, Mr G. T. Gillies, aged 94. Mr Denny says Mr Gillies is sympathetic to the idea of restoring the buildings.

However, most of them are on cheap harbour board leases — “Glasgow” leases — for a 21-year period with a right of renewal in perpetuity. The buildings provide

cheap warehousing and the owners would be reluctant to relinauish them for modern, high-priced structures, says Mr Denny. As a way of preserving the architecture of Oamaru, the council is changing one of its ordinances. People who are building or rebuilding in the main street or Harbour and Tyne Streets will be required to respect the existing Oamaru-stone character.

“That’s the good news,” says Cr Stead. “The bad news is that Government departments are so poorly co-ordinated that we don’t know early enough when they are going to rebuild something.

“By the time we hear about it, the building has already gone to tender or the plans are already drawn up.” That has happened with three Government buildings: the Ministry of Works and Transport building, the telephone exchange — “which is sheathed in aluminium and people call the woolshed” — and the new arts and library block at Waitaki Girls’ High School. Cr Stead says that the major, two-storey buildings at the school are made of Oamaru stone. The new, single-storey building is made of concrete block and “fits in with heating plant.” The council asked if Oamaru stone could be used, but was told that that would require redesigning to comply with earthquake regulations.

These setbacks are more than outweighed by the success of the Forrester Gallery — a remarkable achievement for any town, let alone one the size of Oamaru. At night, spotlights highlight the classical Greek columns, reminding Oamaruvians and visitors of the men of vision and courage who designed beautiful buildings a century ago.