Meet Wellington’s latest heritage building

This is not a joke. This has honestly been classified as a heritage building that needs protection.

The Spinoff reports:

Wellington’s independent hearing panel this week recommended a former British Imperial Oil storage tank in Miramar should receive heritage protection in the District Plan. Wellington city council’s heritage evaluators found the tank had value as “an increasingly rare representative example of bulk storage tanks erected nationally in the 1920s”.

It’s an effing bulk storage tank. What’s next. They’ll decide that a power pylon is a heritage building.

The company wanted to build facilities for 150 new crew members, and the gas tank site was the only suitable location he had found. “Providing the heritage listing would make the situation significantly more difficult, including making our ability to increase employment in Miramar more problematic,” he said. 

So we have a choice of a rusting storage tank or facilities for 150 crew members, and WCC has gone with the storage tank.

The solution here is to take away the ability of authorities to destroy the value in buildings owned by others by declaring them heritage. Just give the heritage authority a budget of say $25 million a year and they can use that to buy anything they thinks needs protecting. I’m pretty sure a rusty tank wouldn’t then make the list.