With only days to go before Ashburton’s new $62 million Te Whare Whakatere building opens, its A-frame mesh feature frontage has had to be dismantled due to being faulty.
Now the district council faces having to open the building’s library, on Monday, without the feature frontage or its signage in place.
District council chief executive Hamish Riach said the district council had asked for the feature mesh shroud to be re-done.
‘‘Disappointingly, the shroud manufacture and installation did not meet specifications. It is a key design feature of Te Whare Whakatere and needs to be right,’’ Riach said.
There was no confirmed date for completion. There would be no cost to ratepayers or the district council for the re-work.
Meanwhile, most people are happy with how signs will be placed on the feature shroud once it has been reinstalled.
The predominant signage on the building will be the words Ashburton District Council, with the district council’s crest. These will be on the feature frontage, while the words Te Whare Whakatere are limited to smaller lettering above the building’s two entranceways. A poll conducted by The Ashburton Courier on its Facebook page had 30 responses from people saying ‘‘yes’’, they approved of the signage. A further four respondents said ‘‘no’’, they did not approve. ‘‘The name has been gifted, so I believe the name should be more prominently displayed,’’ one of the ‘‘no’’ respondents, who did not want to be named, said. The man said he would like to see the Te Whare Whakatere name on the mesh feature frontage alongside the district council’s name and crest.
The Te Whare Whakatere name for the town’s new civic centre and library was gifted to the district council by Arowhenua.
Arowhenua upoko Tewera King said it was the first time he heard about the signage placement when The Ashburton Courier phoned him on Tuesday.
He said the Ashburton District Council wording and crest was important to the community. At the same time he personally believed it would have been nice to have the Te Whare Whakatere signage ‘‘a little bit bigger’’.
‘‘But at the end of the day, even though it was a name from Arowhenua, it was gifted to the district council, and how they display it is how they display it,’’ King said.
Te Whare Whakatere will be blessed at a ceremony tomorrow at 7am. District council administration staff are expected to move in on January 29.
