What's happening
We're demolishing the Council-owned building at 79 Grey Street to create space for more than a dozen new car parks and a public laneway.
The laneway will link Grey Street with the service road behind the property.
Longer-term, we're exploring ways to extend the lane through to Durham Street. This will help people access a new bus stop area on Durham Street while offering university students an easy walk to shops and food outlets in the city centre.
The car parks will remain in place until a long-term decision is made about the future of the property. The laneway is intended to be permanent.
The 79 Grey Street building formerly housed the Importer furniture shop. It has seismic (earthquake) problems that are not economical to repair.
Works
We started demolishing the building on Tuesday, 4 June, with works expected to take up to six weeks during daytime hours (typically 7am-4pm).
The car parks and laneway will be built in late 2024.
It's not likely we'll need to close Grey Street at any point, but we will need to block the footpath in front of the building when we remove the awning at the start of the demolition process.
We're aiming to minimise disruption as much as possible, but there will inevitably be some noise. The site will be sprayed with water regularly to keep dust to a minimum.
It might be necessary to close part of the service road behind the property at certain times. If this occurs, it will still be possible to access other parts of the service road from either the Elizabeth Street or Grey Street ends.
Context
This project joins many other initiatives aimed at making our city centre a great place to live, work, learn, and play.
Other parking improvements include the recent opening of a secure bike park on Grey Street with room for 78 bikes and e-scooters, and the opening of 145 car parking spaces on Dive Crescent.
Later this year, at least 200 more parking spaces will become available at Panorama Towers on Hamilton Street, and 106 spaces at a car park on Devonport Road.
More information
You can find out more about the vision for the downtown area in our City Centre Action and Investment Plan.