Waikato Business News February/March 2018

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36 WAIKATO BUSINESS NEWS February/March 2018 VICTORIA ON THE RIVER Collaboration key to first major river project Hamilton has talked for decades about turning to face the river. So it’s fair to say Victoria on the River has been a long time coming. By RICHARD WALKER Once the decision was made to develop the site between Victoria St and the Waikato River as a park, however, the decades quickly fell away. The council had bought the 2476 sq m site and commercial building in 2009, and in 2010 the building was demolished, with the site operating as a car park. First choice was not an open space park, but opportunity came calling in the form of an engineering report that revealed the ground was unstable and contaminated with heavy metals. The cost of remediation would have been prohibitive and the council took its chance. It decided to turn the site into an amphitheatre-style park, with views across the Waikato River, and in December 2015 voted to commit funds. Stage one, done with archaeological oversight, saw the removal of 6300 cubic metres of contaminated material in 2016. The site then sat as a temporary car park before the main contractors, Schick Civil, started the construction contract in April last year. Schick Civil contract manager Colin Vette was at the centre of things, on site for the entire contract. “It was a very challenging project to go right from greenfield to client handover (from start to finish), working with our committed team of staff and sub-contractors. It's something I really enjoy doing, following a project through.” Clearing the area took about 40 days, operating four trucks and trailers five days a week, and carting more than 3000 cu m of material to the Hampton Downs controlled landfill. The site had once housed the Waikato Times, which had moved into the building in 1924, the year after it was constructed. The building was made solid - Schick Civil removed 1500 tonnes of concrete Gina Hailwood, Stark Construction, Maria Barrie, Hamilton City Council and Colin Vette, Schick Construction at the Victoria on the River site. foundations. Unexpected was the poor condition of a sewer, which required much more work than anticipated. “We were just going to replace the manholes and it ended up being quite a major with gas mains and everything else. When that building was put there they didn't worry about boundaries too much.” Also memorable was uncovering an old steam boiler in one of the corners near Victoria Street. But perhaps most intriguing was a find from the early days: bottles. There were all types, all shapes and all colours, associated with a domestic residence which must have been on the site in the 1800s. Most were found discarded down the bank, probably as a result of people throwing their waste there in the 19th century. “The Victoria on the River project had evidence for 19th century domestic activity and adds to our knowledge of Hamilton's history,” says Sian Keith, who was the project’s archaeologist. “The artefact assemblage was interesting given the number and variety of complete bottles; however the finds are not overly significant and fairly typical of what you'd expect to find for material discarded in the mid to late 19th century.” They included a patent medicine bottle, an ink bottle, a Black beer bottle and two varieties of bottle used to keep aerated water and soda. The oldest of these, a Torpedo or Hamilton Patent bottle, was being made before the 1870s, so would have coincided with the earliest years of the settlement of Hamilton. The bottles are now in the care of Sian Keith Archaeology Ltd, being analysed before being offered to the Waikato Museum. When Mr Vette looks at the park now, he can see his team’s handiwork everywhere. “We did the whole thing, we jackhammered, we removed all the contaminated material,” he says. “We built a timber boardwalk by ramming timber piles across and down to the river path and then used imported hardwood for the decking (for its longevity), Continued on page 37 SCHICK CIVIL CONSTRUCTION IS PROUD TO BE HEAD CONTRACTOR FOR THE HCC VICTORIA ON THE RIVER PROJECT. We specialise in: Commercial and Industrial Development / Subdivisions and Lifestyle Blocks / Roading / Bulk Earthworks / Retaining Walls and Hard Landscaping / Drainage Schick Civil Construction S7129C Supreme Award Winners CCNZ - Waikato Construction Awards 2015, 2016 & 2017 Ph: 07 849 3111 • Fax: 07 849 4545 • 18 Manchester Place, Te Rapa • PO Box 20463, Hamilton 3241
VICTORIA ON THE RIVER WAIKATO BUSINESS NEWS February/March 2018 37 From page 36 which took three months in itself. There was a lot of precast concrete which needed foundations, and then the laying of all the paving in situ concrete and basalt pavers.” The figures help tell the story: Great design the secret to VOTR Everyone should have an office view like Brian White’s. From his first floor architects’ practice in the Riverbank building he looks out across the Waikato River where it flows through the heart of Hamilton. And closer at hand, in fact right below, he looks down on the city’s newest park, Victoria on the River. It’s a great view, and one with a twist. Because when he does take a moment to look down, he is surveying his own work. He and his firm, Edwards White, designed the park, and it is a rare treat for an architect to be able to observe so closely how people use one of their designs. Some of the uses are unexpected. Like the particular part of the balustrade where, time and again, small groups fetch up, to lean and look out across the river and beyond. “Our brief was all about making as strong a connection as we could between the city and the river,” Brian says. “One of the strategies to do that was in the middle we've created an opening with no balustrade so you can sit on the seat further up the amphitheatre and look out across the river. To either side of that where the slope below is too great not to have a balustrade we've had to put one in. But that balustrade's more successful as a place to pause, everyone congregates to lean on it and look at the river.” Also unforeseen was the way in which the park is used for exercise. Fitness groups use it to do circuits and he has seen what he thinks was a mixed martial arts group jumping up the steps two at a time as part of their training. Lunchtime joggers often make it their starting point to get to the riverpath below, as do cyclists. What none of those people see is the design behind the space they are enjoying, at least not in anything like the detail Brian and his team see. The main design challenge was to make it a space that would connect the city to the river, and they also had the unstable nature of the slope down to the river to contend with. The finished design serves the function of helping to shore up the bank. One piece of detail: the code says a gradient steeper than one in 20 requires hand rails either side of the path for wheelchairs. The last thing the design team wanted was a great clutter of hand rails, so they ensured the ramps stayed • 194 timber piles were used for the boardwalk, and were rammed up to 7m deep. • 2680 linear metres of decking timber were fixed down with 18,000 stainless steel screws. • There are 672 metres of precast concrete retaining walls in the terraces. And, in case you were wondering, 730kg of rock salt were used to provide the grip pattern in the in situ concrete area. Mr Vette was ever-present through the eight months of stage two, with a core crew of about seven and up to 13 on any given day. Also involved was another Hamilton-based firm, AECOM, the geotechnical engineers who had provided the original report showing the site was essentially loose fill. “It was a good project because of the client, the council, and the engineer Scott King (AECOM),” says Mr Vette. “We worked in a collaborative way.” Continued on page 38 at one in 20 as they zig zag down towards those balustrades, and to a boardwalk that connects directly with the river path itself. Further detail: They had to get the slope of the bank back to 38 degrees maximum because any steeper and it became too likely to slip. “The whole thing's designed so that nowhere's a dead end. It's all leading you, so you can walk in loops and people are using it that way. You can come from town down through the ramps and cycle straight down onto the main river path, or you can walk along the upper promenade “From our perspective it's just so satisfying to see people enjoying it. We go down there for lunch, it's great when you can enjoy the fruits of your work.” Double Tees - Rib & Infill - Flatslabs - Bridge Beams - Panels - Stairs - Columns & Beams
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