The layout of the building has changed, a new research laboratory has been built and a rehabilitation centre for the birds established on site.
Tourism Waitaki general manager Jason Gaskill said while the redevelopment had not significantly increased the colony’s footprint, there had been a need to provide more space for researchers.
The redesign would also allow visitors, especially in the daytime, to see "a more immediate dissemination of the research" and something "more reflective" of what colony staff were doing for the wildlife.
"We’re a research organisation that has a tourism function."
Tourism Waitaki manages the penguin colony, which attracted 70,000 paying visitors last year, and was on track to increase visitor numbers this year, he said.
The colony’s research scientist, Dr Philippa Agnew, said the science had always been "there in the background", but Mr Gaskill had been making sure science was seen to be "really significant".
"They [visitors] just really want to see penguins. They’re not there to listen to all the details of what we do up here and out there. That [new display area inside] is really going to give us the opportunity to talk a little more about the research: what we’ve learned, and what we can learn, and what we’re doing with the birds to look after them.
"That’s what wildlife these days needs. They [penguins] need people to care, and to do the research, and find out more about them, and how to help them."
The colony now had a Department of Conservation permit to care for up to 12 of any of New Zealand’s penguin species. Last year, while construction was under way at the site, in its first year the rehabilitation centre, helped two yellow-eyed penguins and a little blue penguin. And those numbers were expected to increase as birds discovered in need of help, from Timaru to Waianakarua, would be rehabilitated at the Oamaru facility.
The upgraded colony was also likely to attract more researchers.
In 2015, the Otago Daily Times reported the expansion would cost $400,000, with the Waitaki District Council spending $250,000 on the redevelopment.
However, costs increased during the tendering process; the additional costs were to be fully funded from depreciation reserves and a revised lease for the penguin colony, council chief financial officer Paul Hope said at the time.
