Napier City's civic centre redevelopment. Photo: NCC (supplied)
Construction is underway on a $110 million re-development of Napier's civic centre.
Eight years ago, the entire civic centre was damaged in an earthquake and deemed unusable.
Council staff have been working from three different temporary and leased buildings since then, and Deputy Mayor Annette Brosnan told Nine to Noon that Napier City Council looked at 30 alternative sites to relocate to and underwent public consultation on whether to rebuild or move.
She said 90 percent of the public was in favour of using the existing site, and they worked through a range of business cases on what would be the best value for ratepayers. The new project will include a library, council offices and public spaces.
"So, what we've ended up with off the back of that analysis is re-strengthening the old library tower for our council staff, and then building a new library adjacent to that," Brosnan said.
Napier City Council strategic programmes manager Darran Gillies said it's a massive undertaking with 10,500 square metres of public land to re-develop.
"It's a big, big project that will take us about two years to complete," he said.
Hawke's Bay consortium MCL Stead won the tender for the project, and 80 percent of the work is being done by local contractors
"We've got up to five local apprenticeships being created and the modelling was that for every $1 million we spend locally on this product, we are adding $3.4 million to our local economy. So, it's going to be a really big boost to Napier," Brosnan said.
The new civic centre is in the heart of Napier, and Brosnan said it's been hard for residents not having that space.
"What we've lost in Napier is our city hub. We have our main streets and retail sector but our space where our community could come see us ... has really been dispersed," she said.
"Bringing that back together we are going to see new businesses open up, especially in that hospitality sector, we are already seeing that especially with construction starting on site."
The council is hoping to cut the ribbon on the new civic centre around May 2027.
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