Source: Radio New Zealand
The demolition of the Metro Plaza and surrounding buildings is part of a project to ‘daylight’ a stretch of the Huatoki Stream which has been covered over for about 100 years. RNZ / Robin Martin
An urban renewal project in New Plymouth’s CBD is revealing traces of the city’s past – piece by piece.
The derelict Metro Plaza is being demolished to allow a stretch of the Huatoki Stream – which has been hidden from view for about a century – to be uncovered.
The Devon Street address has been home to a multitude of businesses over the years including a bakery, drapery, tearooms, and furniture store before in more recent years hosting a cafe, night club and even a Subway outlet.
Senior project manager Steve Ilkovics said the May and Arrowsmith bakery was the earliest to leave its mark.
Steve Ilkovics believes the Oregon Pine (Douglas Fir) beams from the old bakehouse were most likely imported from the United States. RNZ / Robin Martin
“The bakehouse was the first building on this site probably built about 1908 or 1910 and there’s some interesting history around how it linked up with some of the old flour mills and the mill building across the way at Powderham Street.
“Potentially it had the capacity to bake all the bread Taranaki needed back in those days.”
An article published when the bakehouse opened in 1918 by the Taranaki Daily News proclaimed it “would be hard to find its equal among the bakehouses of the Dominion”.
The top floor held up to 305 tonnes of flour, which was fed through to two large hoppers to mixing machines on the second floor, where the dough was fed down to the ground floor where there were “five big ovens, each capable of holding 480 to 500 loaves”.
NPDC infrastructure project manager James Harrop takes a look at the Old Bakehouse beams before their removal. Supplied
About “9000 dozen eggs” could be stored in the cellar and a concrete platform was specially constructed on the ground floor for breaking the vast quantities needed each day.
Ilkovics said experts had been bought in to examine the wooden beams which held up the three-storey bakehouse.
“They identified this wood as being Oregon pine, know as Douglas Fir here in New Zealand as well.
“These are 14m-long beams, which are probably from the heart of the tree, but interestingly we didn’t start growing Douglas Fir in New Zealand until around about the 1870s or 1880s, so we can only assume these were imported from the United States.”
New Plymouth District Council intends to repurpose the beams as street furniture, decking, handrails and other public‑space features.
Demolition manager Brett Wheeler, of Wheeler Demolition, said the job had not been without its challenges.
Demolition manager Brett Wheeler said protecting the Huatoki Stream from debris had been one of the toughest challenges of the project. RNZ / Robin Martin
“Probably managing the stream, the awa looking after that has been toughest. If it was a different kind of demo we would’ve just caved all this in and loaded it out.
“But the methodology of this one had to be cut and carry because we can’t put too much weight on certain parts of the floor especially at the front where it’s all timber framing, so we’ve had to crane diggers into certain points.”
His crew had made several surprising finds.
“So a good one’s just down here. We pulled one of the walls away and the foundation for this building, we’re standing on, is like a pretty old bluestone masonry wall, which is pretty cool.
“No one knew it was there until we ripped down three layers of walls and found it.”
Ilkovics had a theory about that wall.
RNZ / Robin Martin
“The blockwork that you can see under the old wooden building there. We believe that is part of the old railway embankment.
“A trainline used to run through this site, along this edge, and that was the original Waitara to New Plymouth line.
“This section was made redundant when the line was diverted along the coast, but a lot of the old brickwork, stonework was just sort of left in place.”
Ilkovics, who said it was a privilege to work on such a project, said another find was the steel framing of a drapery that once occupied the site.
“This beam on the ground here was part of the old McGruer’s building, which was constructed in the 1930s, again we didn’t know much about it until we peeled back the cladding.
RNZ / Robin Martin
“We found it was an import and you can actually see here from the stamp that it’s come from a company called Dorman Long & Co in Middlesbrough, England which still fabricates steel components and exports them around the world today.”
The company famously supplied steel for both the Auckland and Sydney harbour bridges.
The New Plymouth District Council had partnered with property developer K.D. Holdings and Ngāti Te Whiti to create the Huatoki public space which is part of its $10 million centre city strategy.
Construction of the wider project – which included new retail, office, and hospitality spaces on both sides of the stream, was due to begin next year
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand