CIVIC CENTRE

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 223, 17 June 1944, Page 6

CIVIC CENTRE

Large-Scale Models Of Two Plans One of the domestic problems for the post-war period in M ellingjoa will be a decision about the civic centre. A tentative decision has been reached already on the basis of the plan prepared in the city engineer’s department (and which has been reproduced in these columns),, but there are people who hold that this is not perhaps the best which can be done with the Town Hall site. The suggestion by Mr. J. W. Mawson, Government townplanner. that, the centre might be locatod nt Clyde Quay-—the present site of the destructor and corporation yards was not seriously entertained by the city council. To give a more comprehensive impression of the preposed civic centre (as visualized in two plans put forward) and the surrounding blocks, two large models on wooden platforms about Jit. by 4ft. have been made in the corporation workshops These set out in cubes of wood roughly the area of each building concerned. and show how each structure will look in respect to others in the vicinity. There is one big difference tn the plans. The city engineer's plan (No. J), shows the whole of the central triangular block (west of the Town Hall) covered with an adniinistrative building. extending through from Mercer Street to M akeheld Street while the block opposite the front of the Town Hall (the triangular block surrounded by Jervois Quay, Makefield Street ami. lower Cuba Street) is left open save for one building, an intimate municipal theatre, the Wakefield Street side This plan also provides for a new structure in keeping with the general architectural design on that block ot city land between the new library and Victoria Street, but set back from the latter street frontage some 30 feet. . No. 2 plan is in disagreement with No. I in that it does not seek to cover the whole of the Town Hall site ' (western end) with a.n administrative block, but reserves about half of it as an open space. As compensation for this, it has provided for a big building to cover the whole of the area opposite the eastern frontage of the Town Hall, leaving only a light well in the centre. Each plan provides a clear vista front Willis Street along Mercer Street. No. 1 places an ornamenral memorial (resembling Cleopatra’s Needle) at the eastern end of Mercer Street, while No. 2 favours a similar ornament in the centre of Mercer Street, near the old public library site.