Aotea CLG minutes

MINUTES

DATE

18 February 2020

TIME

4pm – 5.30pm

LOCATION

Aotea Station project office: Level 10, Wellesley Centre, 44 – 62 Wellesley Street West

MEETING

Aotea Station Community Liaison Group Meeting

ATTENDEES

CLG: Ben Thompson, Auckland Council (BT); Bruce Castle, Manhattan Apartments (BC); Darren Hayes, President Hotel (DH); Kristen Flannery, Metro NZ Property Management (KF); Noelene Buckland, City Centre Residents Group (NB); Tania Loveridge, Heart of the City (TL); Peter Young, Auckland Council (PY); Youhei Kuroda, Daikoku (YK).

Link Alliance: Aaron Hutching (AH), Alisdair Simpson (AS), Claire Wannamaker (CW), Hugh Leersnyder (HL), Mark Anderson (MA), Matt Sinclair (MS), Richard Jenkins (RJ), Shaun Sinclair (SS)

APOLOGIES

Brian Biddle, Dalgon Kim, Graeme Gunthorp, Crystal Choi, Vicky Dick.

Agenda Items No

Item

Speaker

1

Welcome, introductions, agenda

AH

2

Early works update

MA

3

Intersection closure

MS

4

Station construction

MS

5

Comms and engagement update

AH

6

Discussion – ongoing role of CLG

AH

7

Tunnel boring name competition

AH

8

Next Steps

AS

Minutes Ref. 01

Item Welcome

AH: Welcome everyone Run through agenda Introductions 02

Early works update MA:

We have a few work areas open at the moment:

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Outside the District Court we have a stormwater line to relocate out of station footprint. We’ll be installing ducting here over the next few days.

Kingston Street was closed earlier this month for utility relocations, some deep excavations for a combined stormwater and wastewater trench. These and the dry services, will be relocated around the ventilation stack to go on Kingston Street. Work will continue here for a couple of months then service providers will make new services live.

The Crowne Plaza service lane gas main is being relocated at the moment. It wasn’t in the location recorded on the plans so it’s additional to our planned relocations.

In the Albert Street slip lane between Durham Street and the Hollywood Bakery we have relocated the dry services and will complete the wet services in the next couple of months. We’ll be starting the next section next week on the southern half of slip lane. We’ll be doing work over the next few days in the Wilson carpark to reconfigure it in preparation for this work.

Outside the AA Centre piling is in progress on temporary works for a deep combined service trench. There are a total of 300 piles to install and we’re about a third of the way through.

On Albert Street between Wellesley and Victoria excavation will start in the next week or two working south towards the Council building digging 4-5m deep for the water then dry services will go on top. Due to the tight nature of the space the trench will be only .5m wide but very deep. This will continue over the next few months and we plan to complete at Wellesley in July this year.

Victoria Street crossings were completed on Waitangi weekend, we ran overtime but the work was completed and we’ve shared lessons learned with AT for the future.

• Question: In Durham Street will the exit from carpark still be on the right?

Response: The exit will be out the bottom. You come up the one way part of Durham and lights and signals will guide people.We have developed a map showing entry and exit into the carpark, this will be shared with everyone.

Action

03

Intersection Closure

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MS

On 1 March we are closing the Wellesley Street West, Albert Street and Mayoral Drive intersection. This has been widely communicated through campaigns with Auckland Transport, as well as activities to inform the local community The reason we need to close the intersection is to build the station through that area Utilitiies are scattered through intersection so the first job to open up the area, consolidate the utlities and build a utility bridge , combining them into one area.

Diaphragm walls will then be constructed through the intersection, then we’ll build the roof structure, put utilities across the roof and backfill.

This takes a year, as one thing has to happen after another, and when we’re finished in a years time the station perimeter walls and roof for will be completed, then we will come back from Mayoral Drive and excavate.

The key driver is to open the intersection as fast as possible.

To maintain access to Crowne Plaza the work zone goes down in front of the building so we can get work done here, then the next stage it will be opened up while we do work on the side.

Construction support area:

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We are expecting 250 to 300 staff working on the project and the construction support area will be used for staff assembly, health and safety briefing, lunchrooms etc The site will also contain a bentonite facility – bentonite is a clay liquid which supports wall construction for the station.

This site is where the entrance structure to the station is going.

Piling rigs and cranes will come in to do foundation walls then a dome structure of white canvas will be constructed over the site .

The north end of Mayoral Drive will be closed off during this time, access will be maintained to the Civic car park and 11 Mayoral Drive.

To clarify - when the intersection opens to through traffic on Wellesley, Mayoral Drive remains closed to through traffic to faciliate these works.

Question: What about pedestrian access?

Response: We will always have clear pedestrian access through that intersection. People will be able to get in and out of businesses and homes and receive deliveries. Pedestrian access through and around the site is shown in a map on our information flyer, and will be signed onsite 04

Station construction

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These images show how we open up road and excavate under the surface, then excavate the next level down to our base slab.

MS

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Communications and engagement update

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06

While working underneath the road we do maintain openings on the road for emergency egress, ventilation and taking in and pulling out materials. We use the centre of road maintaining traffic flow either side.

This image shows how we pull spoil out of the holes. We put it on a small truck, we use smaller trucks around our site and they carry it to larger trucks further away.

Once the structure is complete we start work on the internal structures - architechtural elements, interior fitout, cladding, escalators and lifts.

Focus is on letting people know what’s happening and keeping people moving through the intersection.

We’re working with Auckland Transport to communicate the changes to the local community and wider Auckland public through paid advertising, media release, a large scale media campaign including billboards. We’re running a series of pop up events later this week and next week with an information display.

We’re meeting with businesses in the area making sure they understand what’s coming up, how it will work and working out any changes required to deliveries and loading zones. We’re making use of opportunities to repurpose bus stops as loading areas in some cases.

We're making sure businesses can receive their deliveries, that rubbish is being collected, and that emergency services have access to the area.

On the ground, Auckland Transport has upgraded their existing wayfinding to help people find new bus stops. There are 30 bus routes affected from 23 February. To allow time for those changes to bed in, for people to make adjustments to their journeys. They’re promoting their new “betterway” webpage helping people get around the city centre.

We have developed flyers with maps showing people how to access businesses around the closure – there are plenty of flyers for you to take with you if you want to make use of them.

We’re make sure businesses can recieve their deliveries and there is access to all local businesses, rubish is being collected and emergenc services have access to the area

Ongoing role of Community Liaison Group

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AH

To date the group been focussed around planning processes – you’ve given us good feedback around delivery work plans that have been created. As we move into the construction phase, I’d see this group being more focussed on working with the community to improve processes There is an opportunity for us to take some feedback on what sort of things would increase interest in the group. We haven’t had vast numbers of people coming along, and this is a prominent project that will be disruptive. This group enables people in the affected community to have direct engagement with the people delivering the project

AH

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Does anyone have thoughts about what might make the group more relevant to people? What are we not covering, what would you like to see us do? You can get in touch with us about this, we’d be keen to hear what you think.

Discussion: TL: We’ve provided a lot of feedback in the past but one thing is always the same – it’s hard to find meeting times that suit everyone. A breakfast time, 7.30am works well in other similar groups. It could help to address the wider picture – include other things that are happening and are affected by the project.

NB: The three big issues are dust, noise and green. At the moment its depressing walking around the city. There’s not dust or noise protection in place, there’s no greenery. We could do a thousand times better and for the amount of time it has to be there we should start making it more attractive now. We have lots of suggestions!

We cant change what has to be done but we can change what it looks like while it’s being done, that’s our focus. The feedback we’re getting is that the nighttime behaviour is affected by the state of the street – it invites antisocial behaviour.

TL endorsed NB’s statement.

AH: Our team are working on a Hoardings plan. Part of it is a response of what businesses want, and we need to reach a balance between walling something off and exposing dust, maintaining sight lines. We’re working on getting the longer term look and feel of street right. The plan can include planters and other KF: There’s a lot more noise coming from Mayoral Drive at night – parties there and

noise from the cul de sac of Federal Street AH: That’s something we can look at now, we have security at night.

MS: We have one security patrol person who looks after our site, we can look at expanding their patrols.

BC: With the traffic control people I think a bit of flexibility is needed – they are good following instructions but we need them to take the initiative and respond to service vehicles and pedestrians waiting.

DH: We’d like to see something to increase foot traffic to those areas, especially on Victoria Street. It puts people off visiting even close destinations becuase the street looks ugly, there are homeless people about.

What impact can we have with regard to what’s happening right now? What can we do to make it more attractive? The buses will bring more people but it looks bad when you get off the bus.

AH: We can address these issues through our development response plan. Right now we are doing temporary works so we use light weight fencing that moves around. The established site will be designed to make the area more attractive for the duration of the construction. We have restrictions with what we can do, and we have requirements for aspects like lighting and pedestrian access. Some areas will be constrained and in others we’ll have more space to play with.

We are keen to respond to what the local community wants to see in these spaces and hear their thoughts on how we work with these constraints to achieve an attractive street environment.

These are all things we can look at as we move forward through the CLG If there are other thoughts you have please get in touch, we encourage you to tap into your networks to widen the circle a bit so we can get more people involved.

As we move into main station construction works there will be greater awareness of the project due to the closure and changes to local area.

07

Tunnel boring machine competition

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Tunnel boring machine is on the way, it will work from Mt Eden and dig through to Karangahape and Aotea.

We are running a competition to name the TBM – we’d like locals to get involved.

Played competition video

Next steps

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AH

Main station works Delivery Works Plans (DWPs) are being finalised at the moment We’ve taken feedback from this group and they’ve been peer reviewed and will be lodged with Council this week.

Council will review, they may request some changes or more information, then when they return the documents to us, work can start.

At the next CLG we’ll be able to report back on the feedback we received, what was used and what changes were made, and we’ll recirculate the plans to you

AS