CONCRETE pouring has finally begun on the Wellington City Council’s $965,000 Drummond Street upgrade, which is at least four months behind schedule.
Repairs on a pedestrian walkway leading from Hanson to Tasman Streets in Newtown began in the first week of June and was meant to be completed by the end of August, but Fulton Hogan now expect its part of the project to be complete by Christmas.
After that, landscaping and planting will still need to be done.
Residents are frustrated that a project forecast to take two months is now taking at least three times that long.
Brett Stanton has lived on Drummond Street for five years and believes delays are the fault of Welling City Council, and not contractors.
“The contractors have gone out of their way to make sure we’ve got a path to our house. They’ve been really good about that,” he says.
“I don’t mind the work, it will definitely improve the street - it’s just taking too long.”
Someone who would like to be referred to as “a frustrated resident” says, “I’ve lived here 25 years, my 92-year-old neighbour’s been here 35 years. It isn’t just transients that live here, this is people’s lives. This is my back door.”
The resident says the council should take responsibility for the delay.
“It has been appallingly mismanaged. When you decide to do something you just bloody do it, you don’t wait around for five months.”
Wellington City Council’s Drummond Street upgrade project manager Kevin Murphy says, “Very early on in the project the contractors came across a water main which according to all records should not have been there. It was damaged, and turned out to be the main water supply for residents in that vicinity.”
While the supply company has covered the cost of replacing the water main, this is not true of power cables that were discovered during excavation to be too shallow to build over the top of.
“Effectively what Wellington electricity lines limited did there is cut off six power cables running up that slope and put in six brand new lengths of cable. It’s a better and newer asset, and we have to meet all that cost. We’re having discussions now about how much that cost will be.”
A resident of Drummond Street said that, “the power company had held the council at ransom”.
Wellington electricity lines limited were unable to be reached for comment.
Murphy says, “I can appreciate that the residents would understandably be a bit peeved. I think the final outcome will be a good one, there’ll be a light on every landing and it will be a lot safer and more attractive to people,” he says.
He says the project is currently still within budget.