Almost two years since the Oamaru Courthouse was closed as an earthquake-prone building, a decision on how the category 1-listed building should be strengthened could be a step closer, following a review of various engineering options.
Engineers from a local group as well as from Opus, the Ministry of Innovation, Business and Employment and the Ministry of Justice met last week to discuss differing approaches, and a spokesman for the Minister for Courts, Chester Borrows, said an agreement on how much it would cost to strengthen the building, and how that should be carried out, were now ''an awful lot closer''.
Extra engineering work to assess what it would take to bring the 129-year-old building up to building-strength standards was commissioned by the Ministry of Justice in November, after its initial estimate of $5 million, made in October last year, was roundly criticised.
However, the Minister for Courts last month said he would also consider another report put forward by an Oamaru-based group.
Mr Borrows' spokesman yesterday said that after the recent meeting, engineers had now ironed out some of their differences.
''They got through a lot of their points of difference that they had and the different approaches they are looking at; not all of them but they did find common ground on quite a few of them.
"They are now going to go back and get a bit more information, to get a better picture of what we are dealing with to resolve some of the others, and we will meet again in the next couple of weeks.''
The courthouse, which is registered as a New Zealand Historic Places Trust category 1-listed building, was closed in November 2011, after it was deemed an earthquake risk.
The Oamaru District Court, which was officially downgraded to a hearings-only court last October, is now temporarily housed in the Oamaru Opera House.
