Queensgate Shopping Centre

Queensgate Shopping Centre in Lower Hutt suffered substantial damage in the 2016 Kaikōura earthquakes. One part of the centre was damaged beyond repair, but the rest could be retained and strengthened. Naylor Love were selected as the preconstruction partner and went on to deliver the strengthening and new build.

The key elements of the project were:

• Demolition of the multilevel car park and cinema
• Construction of a new multilevel car park and cinema complex
• Repair and upgrade of the balance of the shopping centre

One of the main drivers for the work was that the shopping centre needed to stay open throughout. We planned the works to ensure there was a little impact as possible on the multiple tenants and mall users, which meant managing vehicle and pedestrian traffic flows, managing security, and completing disruptive work at night.

The centrepiece of the strengthening in the main concourse was the movement joint we created by means of a Tectonus Resilient Slip Friction Joint system, separating the lightweight roof structure of the concourse from the heavier cinema lobby above to protect it from being overloaded during a large seismic event.

The car park building has a deep raft foundation requiring concrete pours of up to 1,000m³ at a time. A great deal of detailed planning and coordination was required to ensure there were enough trucks available for these pours.

This was a highly technical build with multiple active workfaces and two tower cranes on site for several years, all on a busy corner site in central Lower Hutt. Both the preconstruction element and the building works kept our engineering, services, construction and cost planning team busy as we endeavoured to find best-for-project solutions.