Supreme Court of New Zealand

Supreme Court building: Progress Report No. 1

Following Cabinet approval, the design concept was unveiled by the Minister for Courts, Rick Barker on 26th September 2006.

The next stage in the project is for exploratory drilling to take place. Exploratory drilling will take place in Justice Park for a period of one month between 16 October and 16 November 2006. Exploratory drilling is required to help in finalising the construction design as the engineers will need to find out what is below the topsoil. The new building will be on piles so it is important to drill down to the bedrock to find out what is there and what the soil composition is.

Justice Park will be temporarily closed during this time but will re-open on 17 November 2006 and will remain open until full construction begins. Construction of the new Supreme Court building is scheduled to begin in May 2007.

The next critical stage in the project is to obtain Resource Consent. The key tasks and associated timeframes are:

• Complete and lodge Resource Consent application. This is expected to take one to two months from the date of Cabinet approval (October/November 2006)
• Notified consent process to take place (this is expected to take four to four and a half months)
• Complete the design development and prepare detailed plans (expected to be completed by March/April 2007)
• Demolition and site clearance (during June 2007)
• Commence construction (September/October 2007)
• Completion of project (late 2009)