Vehicle access to both levels of the Wall Street mall's carparking was blocked on Thursday to allow work to begin on a $2.5 million redevelopment of the mall's first floor parking area, expected to take "three to four months", Dunedin City Council city property manager Robert Clark said.
A new ramp diverting vehicles straight to the mall's second floor would be ready for use in "six or seven weeks", providing access to about 80 car parks on the building's top floor.
However, about 70 car parks on the first floor would be removed in the redevelopment, to make room for 3200sq m of office space for Fisher and Paykel's 150-staff global design and call centres, Mr Clark said.
Negotiations were continuing with a tenant for a 70sq m office also on the first floor, he said.
The "stage two" redevelopment of Wall Street was planned, and allowed for in the mall's resource consent, but had been brought forward to accommodate Fisher and Paykel's needs, Mr Clark said.
The mall's ground floor retail tenants had been notified and were "quite comfortable with it", he said.
"I think it actually improves their position - they have 150 people in the building [who] will use the facilities."
The cost of the redevelopment was in addition to the mall's original $34 million budget, but Fisher and Paykel would cover the cost of fitting out the "largely open-plan" office space once completed, Mr Clark said.
The redevelopment project comes less than a month after the mall was opened by Mayor Peter Chin on March 20.
The work also followed a row between the mall's developers and the management of the neighbouring Golden Centre, over an incomplete internal walkway linking the two malls, and delays by some tenants in completing shop fit-outs in time for Wall Street's opening.
However, Mr Clark defended the mall's start yesterday, saying the obstacles had been "virtually impossible to manage".
"You can't not open because of that situation because that's unfair on existing tenants."
And motorists left to hunt for a parking space could still use the Meridian or Golden Centre parking facilities, or the nearby Great King St parking building, all in the "immediate vicinity", Mr Clark said.
"There's certainly plenty of carparking in the area," he said.
