About

Rebuilding Lower Hutt's main shopping centre after the Kaikōura earthquake, while keeping its doors open.

Queensgate Redevelopment

Project Leads

Ben Gurton Cale Wood

Client

Stride Property

Service

Management

Location

Wellington

Sector

Tourism & Hospitality

Status

Completed 2021

The 2016 Kaikōura earthquake left Queensgate's cinema and car park building damaged beyond repair, and assessments found four more of the centre's buildings earthquake-prone. Queensgate is Lower Hutt's biggest shopping centre, and its owner, Stride Property, needed it safe and trading again quickly, foot traffic and rental income restored and shoppers confident it was safe to return.

RCP managed the demolition of the cinema and car park, the insurance claim behind it, and the rebuild. The new car park and cinema were designed to an IL3 standard, built on a buckling-restrained braced frame to hold up in a one-in-1,000-year earthquake. The levels were reworked to recover car parks lost to code changes, with a new ramp to ease the traffic.

Time was the priority. RCP split the rebuild into five parts, each designed, procured and consented separately so they could move in parallel, then took on the harder task of tying them back into one programme.

Strengthening a centre that stayed open

RCP also ran a separate four-year programme to strengthen the four earthquake-prone buildings, around $30 million of work, all of it inside a live shopping centre. RCP scheduled it with Stride and the main contractor to keep disruption off the tenants, working at night and shifting shops around as the strengthening moved from building to building.

The centre came back in stages, the car park first, open in time for the Christmas rush, then the cinema, then the strengthened buildings one by one, handed back to Stride and to a community that could trust it again.