RSA urges action on Stoke Hall strengthening despite cost blowout

Despite a cost blowout to $4.3m, the Nelson RSA is urging the city council to make haste on major earthquake repairs to the Stoke Memorial Hall.

The hall on Main Road Stoke was built as a living World War II memorial in 1952 and has been used by many groups and organisations over the years.

However, it was closed in March 2020 after it was assessed as having a 17 per cent rating against the New Building Standard (NBS), compared to a previous assessment of 24 per cent in 2014.

It was anticipated it would cost $2million to bring the building up to standard, with the council approving a recommendation to allocate $1.2m of capital expenditure towards the project.

But after receiving new engineering advice, input from the contractor, and costings from a quantity surveyor, the cost has now more than doubled and the council has “paused” the project to “allow time to consider the best option”.

“To give an idea of the extent of the work that needs to be carried out, nearly every part of the building from the hall’s timber floor to the roof would need to be removed and replaced for earthquake strengthening to go ahead,” says group manager community Services, Andrew White.

This means the project is now essentially a rebuild.

“This would increase the seismic strength of the building to 67 percent of the standards set for a building of this type.”

Andrew says they will need to assess the demand for a building at the site, and whether a new building might be an appropriate alternative.

“A new business case will review overall demand for usage and consider strengthening against other options. This means that the budget allocated for strengthening in 2022/23 would be deferred to a later year.”

Nelson RSA committee member Ian Barker, who has lived in Stoke since 1980, would like to see the council move swiftly on the project, despite the cost.

He says the RSA strongly advocates for the strengthening of the hall to “respect the reasons for its existence”.

“When you look at how it came into being, it was because the Stoke community got behind it in two ways - raising money and getting the pound for pound subsidy from the Government and building it as volunteers.”

Ian says they would support a rebuild as long the façade is maintained.

“That is the number one thing. That is where we remember those soldiers who didn’t come back. To us, it is still a living memorial just as it was when the Government funded it on the condition that it would be there for the generations to come,” he says.