Kia ora neighbours,

Looking back into April, Aotea Station marked a major milestone of beginning underground excavation works, which included a visit from Mayor Phil Goff. Looking forward, all our neighbours are invited to our next community liaison group meeting focusing on the above-ground streetscape plans - read on for details and much more!

As always, to contact us you can email us: aotea@linkalliance.co.nz or call 0800 CRL TALK (0800 275 8255 and press option 3) to speak to us. 

Ngā mihi nui,
The Aotea Station team

Mayor and Councillor visit as work heads underground

An official spade in the ground celebration after Easter marked the move to underground excavations at Aotea Station. 

Auckland’s Mayor Phil Goff turned the first spade of soil to symbolically start underground construction, with Councillor Pippa Coom also joining in the ceremony.

We are primarily using a top-down construction method to build Aotea Station. The walls and roof are built first, and then the underground station excavated beneath. The advantage with this methodology is we can open the road above while excavation and the underground build continues. 

Aotea Station will be approximately 15 metres deep, with 300 metre long platforms and entrances on both Wellesley and Victoria Streets.

Upcoming Community Liaison Group meeting - May 2021

You are warmly invited to our next community liaison meeting, which will be held Thursday 20 May. These are open to all our neighbours around the construction site, and are an opportunity for you to hear about the Aotea Station construction in more detail and provide feedback on project plans.

This meeting's focus will be the above-ground design documentation that will soon be submitted to Auckland Council, in preparation for the streetscape upgrades during 2023. We will be presenting the key delivery work plans associated with this final phase of the project.

When: 4:00pm – 5:30pm, Thursday 20 May
Where: Lord Nelson Restaurant, 37 Victoria Street West, Auckland
Agenda: 

• Presentation on the Aotea Station station design and public realm reinstatement design from Simon Lough and Alan Whitely (public realm), and Stefan Geelen (station design)
• Overview of the construction phase of works for the public realm reinstatement with Station Manager Matt Sinclair.

To register, please email us at: aotea@linkalliance.co.nz

UPDATE: February CLG meeting - Social Impact & Business Disruption annual review

Following feedback from the CLG and community members, the annual social impact and business disruption review is now complete. The document will be uploaded to the City Rail Link website in the coming days. 

Dual language Te Reo Māori and English signage

Me kite, me rongo, me kōrero te reo māori – See Te Reo Māori, hear Te Reo Māori, speak Te Reo Māori. 

New dual language Te Reo Māori and English wayfinding signage is being brought in to help point people in the right direction around City Rail Link work sites.  

The CRL project is committed to celebrating and normalising Te Reo Māori in the community and you’ll see more dual language wayfinding being rolled out around CRL’s construction sites. Look out for this new wayfinding around the Aotea Station site! 

Kia kaha Te Reo Māori!

Aotea Station's milestone tracker is now live

To help keep track of Aotea Station construction, we have produced a milestone tracker that shows all the key works to date as well as the remaining work to be done.

Over the past couple of months we have completed a number of key milestones, including most recently the bluestone wall deconstruction and the first underground excavation. 

To keep track of all the milestones, click here.

Upcoming intersection closure switch - mid 2021

An intersection closure switch will take place in June or July this year, to allow construction to continue for Aotea Station.

Wellesley Street re-opens after it was closed to traffic in March 2020 to move underground utilities and to begin station construction. The Victoria Street / Albert Street intersection will remain open to people on foot but will close to traffic for approximately two years until 2023. 

Access around the intersection closure 

• Access by foot will always be maintained to businesses and properties.
• Temporary footpaths and wayfinding will be installed to ensure people are able to move with ease through the site.
• Temporary loading zones will be installed around the intersection closure to help businesses maintain on-time deliveries.
• A programme to support local businesses, as well as community events, activations, and public art will be delivered during the closure

Auckland Transport bus changes 
Most bus routes in the city centre will change due to the intersection closure switch, and many will be re-routed through Wellesley Street once it has re-opened. These changes will be widely published through www.AT.govt.nz/BetterWay and other Auckland Transport channels closer to the time.

Te Pūkaki, Aotea Station's visitor information centre
We will be relocating Te Pūkaki to the Victoria Street area once the closure switch has happened. It's last day on Wellesley Street will be 12 May as we need to move it off-site temporarily in order to re-build the road so it's ready to open in June or July. 

Cheap & Cheerful Eats in the city centre in May

From 1 - 31 May, over 80 Heart of the City cafés, bars and eateries will be serving up Cheap & Cheerful Eats for $15 or less.

Whether diners are in the mood for dumplings or burgers, a coffee and something sweet or something salty with a cold beer, Cheap & Cheerful Eats are perfect for grabbing a bite before a giggle at the New Zealand International Comedy Festival, catching up with a friend over lunch or seizing the opportunity for an office social club outing. 

For of the offers and participating eateries go to:
www.heartofthecity.co.nz/cheap-and-cheerful-eats

Participating eateries within the Aotea Station area include: 
Little Yum, 39 Victoria Street West
Belly Worship, 41 Victoria Street West
Mexican Cafe, 67 Victoria Street West
Chawlas Indian Restaurant, 21A Wellesley Street West
Elliott Stables, Elliott Street

New public artwork installed on Albert Street

Ça va, It goes, by local artist, Eliav Meltzer remodels a body of PVC panels designed by Blink - a Tāmaki Makaurau based creative studio - to produce a series of abstracted sails that span 38 meters of hoarding. The ocean is an omnipresent feature of our city and our way of living. Across this urban canvas, Meltzer expresses this connection to the ocean and seafaring on a monumental scale whilst the colours and forms form a pulsating rhythm, charging this space with the vitality of our seaboard city.

Find out more about Eliav Meltzer's work here

Art installations around our construction site help to transform the public space for visitors and provide opportunities for local artists to showcase their work. With the significant construction required to build Aotea Station, the curation of public art around the site helps to ensure the areas are still an attractive and vibrant place to visit and spend time in. It's like one big outdoor art gallery! 

Jargon Buster: D-Wall

Each month Link Alliance looks at some of the more technical terms from construction and ‘translates’ them. This month we look at the term ‘D-Wall’.

D-Wall are diaphragm walls that make-up most of the underground station's foundations at Aotea Station. A D-wall is a continuous concrete wall constructed into a deep trench excavation used to form an underground barrier, the structural perimeter of the station area. Diaphragm walls are initially supported by an engineered fluid (typically a sodium bentonite mud) which is later replaced by a permanent material (concrete).

Diaphragm walls generate much less vibrations than other forms of construction, which makes them more suitable for large city based construction project such as the CRL project.