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.