Oriental Bay Beach Development

Techlink would like to thank Bruce Geden and Paula Smith, for their contributions to this case study.

Introduction

Wellington City Council has upgraded the Oriental Bay foreshore by enlarging and enhancing the existing Freyberg and Oriental Bay beaches, and creating a new beach east of the Band Rotunda.

There is more sandy space for Wellingtonians and visitors to the city to enjoy walking, playing or relaxing. More than 22,000 tonnes of sand, from a site inland of Golden Bay in the northern region of the South Island, was placed on the beaches.

The entire project has been funded by approximately $4 million from the Wellington City Council and approximately $3.5 million from the Plimmer Bequest.

Concept Development

Over the last 50 years, Oriental Bay's foreshore has evolved in a very unplanned way especially around the Freyberg area. Sand, which came from overseas, was dumped there during World War 2. From then on there have been several different haphazard changes and additions.

The Wellington City Council had to make a decision, either to let Oriental Bay degrade and in time have the sand shift away from the shore due to the severity of the storms that Wellington experiences, or given the Bay's popularity, do something to improve the area. The “Wellington Waterfront Development" project focusses on the nearby waterfront which extends along Taranaki Wharf and in front of Te Papa, Museum of New Zealand. The next phase of this development project is the “Waterfront Park" which will transform the Chaffers area between Te Papa and Oriental Parade. The Oriental Bay foreshore development project is technically not part of the “Wellington Waterfront" project but is a geographic extension of it. The very strong link between the two and the popularity of Oriental Bay were good reasons to improve the standard of the area (Conceptual statement). No matter what time of the day or night, workdays, weekends, public holidays people can be seen walking, boating, relaxing, or exercising around the foreshore of central Wellington and Oriental Bay.

The catalyst for the project was a proposal put forward in 1996 to construct a small new beach east of the Band Rotunda. This proposal expanded into one to redesign Oriental Bay's entire foreshore area spanning 800 metres of coastline.

Timeline

The following is the timeline showing the lead up to construction work which began in November 2002.

Resource Consent process

The sand as reclamation and its retention

The existing sand is not a natural product of the Wellington harbour. The sea wall around Oriental Bay stops any normal degradation of the coastline by wind and water and the coastline is not shaped in a way to capture sand. This area of the harbour is extremely vulnerable to the batterings of northerly storms which tend to move the sand away from the Bay.

In terms of the project, the natural curvature of the bay is being retained and a more extensive beach is being created, augmenting various headlands around the bay in order to retain the new sand. If sand was just “dumped" into the area without constructing, very subtly, a series of structures to keep it in place, it would disappear over a couple of weeks.

A barge measuring 100 metres in length and 25 metres in width was used to bring sand, from a hillside near Takaka, to its new home at Oriental Bay. By the end of May 2003, nearly two thirds of the new sand was deposited on the main Oriental Bay beach and the new beach east of the Band Rotunda, where it is being filtered and shaped by the waves and tide.

The new sand appears to be “washing away" off the beaches, but this is all part of the process of building the beach. The new sand, because it came from a hillside hasn't been naturally sorted by sea or river water. It has been intentionally placed with a steep edge so the waves will wash over it and filter out finer, almost silt-like materials – leaving on the beach the heavier grains of sand. The sand will also change colour as the finer grains are filtered out, leaving a lighter coloured sand behind.

Silt from sand has also been dumped further out in the bay and sand from the mouth of the Hutt River is being used to fill in a natural depression on the harbour bed near Freyberg Beach – when the sand is dumped into the depression, a plume of silt discolours the water, making it look like sand is being washed out to sea.

One very important aspect in relation to the sand was the relationship with Iwi as a stakeholder. Wellington City Council managed this issue right from the outset before any decisions were made and continued to be in constant contact and communication with local Iwi throughout planning. Both Iwi from the north and south were comfortable with the transporting of sand from Golden Bay to Wellington.

Mission Bay in Auckland as a comparison

Mission Bay in Auckland is an example of a successfully reclaimed beach. The Wellington City Council used the website explanation of this reclamation as a resource along with other relevant information. There were aspects which were similar but also a lot of differences. For example, Oriental Bay doesn't have an extensive grassed area as a back drop but does have the city/sea wall. Mission Bay is inside the very sheltered Waitemata harbour which is most unlike Oriental Bay.

Comment on evaluation and construction of the project

With everything going on in Oriental Parade, the biggest challenge was to keep everyone satisfied before construction, during construction, then to capture the hearts of everyone following construction.

The project was very construction related and the main thing was the coordination of the many facets within Oriental Bay – it's not just a beach project that's why the Wellington City Council has called it a “Foreshore Enhancement" project.

The Foreshore Enhancement project dealt with such things as:

1. Electricity, drainage, sewage, stormwater, the natural coastal make-up and the sand itself.
   
   Stormwater was discharged from the Oriental Bay residential area and its roads through approximately 20 outlets onto the beaches. Sewage is piped through an entirely separate system to Moa Point. The new beach design resulted in stormwater being discharged into the sea at just three locations that will avoid the sand being washed into the sea each time it rains.
   
   
2. The footpath promenade. It's not just an average footpath, it's a 10 metre wide footpath so it's obviously a very important recreational facility.
   
   The new work involved construction of a new kerb and channel, which improved drainage, provided for easier maintenance, and shifted the kerb away from the base of the Norfolk Island Pines. Sections of the footpath around the seafront were disrupted while the new stormwater pipes and street furniture were installed and the whole area resealed.
   
   
3. The fixed coastal structures like the heritage items e.g., the sea wall, the Band Rotunda, the Norfolk Island pines which are protected trees.
   
   
4. There are the broader recreational activities that “live" there e.g., Freyberg Pool, a point of interest in terms of people coming and going, and the smaller ones such as The Tugboat and various cafes etc. dotted around.
   
   The Freyberg area will have a new changing and toilet facility, and double the existing grass area. A feature will be the 110metre long wooden pier with the amenity block and car park on the Freyberg pool side, and grass and sand area on the other side.
   
   Freyberg Beach will be off-limits throughout the construction period, and during some stages, use of the foreshore area itself will be severely restricted so the work can be conducted as quickly and safely as possible.
   
   Public access will be maintained where possible, with public areas and routes clearly marked.
   
   
5. The traffic. There are 20,000 vehicles going around the Bay per day on average that had to be kept going both during and after construction.
   
   Construction on the site was limited to 7.30am to 6.00pm on Monday to Saturday, with no work on Sundays and public holidays. During these hours, construction activities may not exceed specified noise levels so that residential amenity is maintained.
   
   
6. Parking was also most important. The residents living across the road in very valuable properties wanted parking available, there were commuters and the pressures of coupon parking.
   
   During the course of the project, parking – particularly on the seaward side of Oriental Bay – was at a premium. However, as a result of the project, 30 additional car parks are now provided around Oriental Bay.
   
   Space in the Freyberg car park will be more efficiently used, providing about eight more car parks than before. The parking management regime will also be changed, removing the option of coupon parking so that its prime function is to accommodate pool users and people visiting Oriental Bay for recreation activities.

Pace, progress and any possible changes

The majority of the project has run better than the WCC expected. The resource consent process is a huge hurdle with a project of this size especially in terms of finance and that it covers 800 metres of coastline in the middle of the capital city of New Zealand. The voluntary consultation sorted out what might have been real opposition. Dealing with such opposition later in the process would have been expensive, both in time and money, and would have created a delay to the project by a year or so. This may have also put the project at risk as opposition and delay makes politicians suspicious of whether they should continue with a project.

There have been definite financial constraints. The project could have had $20 million spent on it easily to make it better not bigger, but neither Wellington nor New Zealand has this amount of money. The few changes have been made to the project due to cost have been related to specific components within the project. For example, some of the issues were:

• An old drain, 100 years old and not on any plans, was found in the middle of Oriental Parade and it was necessary to find out if it was still serviceable.
• The concave shape of the bay could have ended up with dominant strong physical structures coming out of the bay making it quite a different shape. The easiest thing to do would have been to put a series of breakwaters around and then put the sand between them to keep the waves out. Instead sand containment structures and devices have been constructed. The submerged reef out from the new eastern beach is an example; a breakwater could have been built above water which would have been much simpler and would have sheltered the beach but the decision was made to build it below water so the reef is effectively a groin forming a curved edge achieving the same result and also keeping the natural beach appearance.
  
  The reef's prime role is to absorb wave energy under storm conditions to minimise the loss of sand around the coastline. On occasions, sand will need to be moved back along the beach, as happens with other artificially supplemented beaches around New Zealand and the world. Likewise, Oriental Bay will require a regular 'top-up' of sand to replace any sand lost from the beach system out of reach from the shore.
• The grain colour and size. There were a lot of issues around obtaining the right type and colour. People didn't want black sand nor grey sand. There is good quality clean sand available and 10% of the price but it wouldn't have been accepted.

For the latest information about the Oriental Bay Beach Development click here.