WellUrban / March 2007
Personal reflections on urbanism, urban life and sustainable urban design in Wellington, New Zealand.
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Watch the birdie
- WellUrban
- This morning, the ravaged environment of Ghuznee St finally got a positive addition to the streetscape: the world's largest tui landed on a roof to feed on some equally giant kowhai blossoms. It's part of the eye-catching new signage for the Forest and Bird headquarters.
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Building rumours 11: Serepisos Towers?
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- The sports pages of the Dominion Post are not the most obvious source of urban development rumours, but there was an interesting titbit tucked away in Saturday's profile of Terry Serepisos, property tycoon, man-about-town and brand new owner of the Wellington Bees/Southerlies/Fever/Whatever. Among the usual breathless enumeration of the clothes, the cars and the parties, there was a reference to his desire to leave a legacy in Wellington, beyond his recent excursions into sports sponsorship. He wants to build Wellington's tallest building.
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Bypassed
- WellUrban
- Well, it's done. The changeover to the southbound leg of the bypass happened without incident at just after 6 this morning, and while it's hard to tell for sure, there don't seem to be any major snarl-ups around town. Tomorrow will be a bigger test, once commuters hit the new layout in force, but we'll still have to wait for a while before we can see whether it achieves what it set out to do.
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Coffee in chains
- WellUrban
- The good news is that, after a slow summer, there are a lot of new cafes, restaurants and bars about to open. I can think of a dozen that are definitely on the way, with another half dozen or so intriguing rumours. The bad news is that most of the cafes that have opened recently, or are about to open soon, are chain stores.
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Building rumours 10: new BNZ at Harbour Quays
- WellUrban
- I've wondered before about images of the planned new BNZ building at Harbour Quays, and I've just had a pointer from a helpful reader to say that there's now a publication on the CentrePort website (458kB PDF) with a couple of renders. Here
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Back on track: not so new
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- Most of you will have noticed the front-page headline in yesterday's Dominion Post: $200m to ease Wellington rail misery. The more observant among you may have noticed that the improvements mentioned in the sidebar (not online) don't quite add up to $200m, but a slightly less impressive $135m. The even more observant (and presumably long-suffering) among you might also have noticed that many of the upgrades sounded very familiar. Is this really news?
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Bypassing Ghuznee
- WellUrban
- The moment of truth is nearly here: in less than a week's time, the bypass will be complete. Well, sort of. When the southbound route opens at 6am this Sunday, SH1 traffic will finally have been diverted out of the city streets and onto ... some other city streets.
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