INITIAL STEP IN NEW HOUSING SCHEME

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 305, 21 September 1936, Page 8

INITIAL STEP IN NEW HOUSING SCHEME

« Tender of £30,000 Accepted ERECTION OF TWO JOINERY FACTORIES Dominion -Special Service. ' Auckland, September 20. An important initial step in the Government’s new housing scheme has been taken with the acceptance by the State Advances Corporation on Saturday of the tender of the Fletcher Construction Company, Limited, of £30,000 for the erection of two joinery factories at Auckland and Wellington. With the plant the total cost of the two factories will be approximately £50,000. They will be at Penrose and Kaiwarra.

Although Plain and strictly utilitarian in appearance, the factories will embody the latest ideas in ventilation and lighting, and will have comfortable staff dressing-rooms and similar accommodation. They will be constructed of corrugated-iron on timber frames, and will have roofs of rubberoid material. Railway sidings will be laid at each side of the two factories to facilitate rapid dispatch of the work.

Mr. J. Fletcher, managing director of the Construction Company, said the work would commence almost immediately. The contract provided for the completion of the buildings by the end of the year. Each building would be 300 feet by 80 feet Mr. Fletcher said the machinery to be installed would be the last word in joinery equipment, and would probably be more modern than anything else in the Dominion. Everything was aimed at turning out the greatest possible amount of high-quality work at the lowest possible cost. Two large timber-drying kilns with a capacity for 40,000 feet a week would be built at each factory. This was to ensure an adequate and continuous supply of dried timber to supplement the supplies coming from the private kilns.