Category: Urban Issues

Down the toilet

The little side street at the Tarana­ki Street end of Cour­tenay Place has been due for big changes for a while, and now it all looks like it’s finally hap­pen­ing. In June, work will start on clos­ing the street and turn­ing it into a pock­et park: more details will be released by the coun­cil in a couple of weeks. Also, the long-aban­doned toi­let block which has been the sub­ject of vari­ous sug­ges­tions over the years (includ­ing, hil­ari­ously, wet­ari­um and sexu­al health museum), will under­go a more pre­dict­able but non­ethe­less wel­come trans­form­a­tion. Ian “Ferg” Fer­guson will con­vert it into a wine bar by doub­ling the under­ground space, lin­ing the walls with wine racks and adding an out­door drink­ing area on the roof. This work will also start in June and is expec­ted to open by Christ­mas under the name “Wine Cel­lar” (WC for short, of course). If only the walls could speak!

But the first change that we’ll see here is the open­ing of the first down­town Wel­ling­ton branch of Bur­ger Fuel. That explains the loud drool­ing noises eman­at­ing from Wel­ling­tonista towers. There’s no offi­cial word on the open­ing date, but con­struc­tion work looks well advanced, so I’d guess that it’s just a few weeks away. Mmm, booze, bur­gers and a sunny park: that’s got to be bet­ter than a turn­ing lane and a hand­ful of car parks.