John Morrison: plan to save Wellington's hertiage buildings

Please read this plan to save, strengthen and make safe the Cuba Street Quarter and a selection of Wellington's top heritage buildings. I invite you to have your say on the buildings you would like to see saved, please post them to my Facebook page or Twitter #SaveOurBuildings And please share this video if you want to see our historic buildings saved More info - follow this link to my Facebook http://statictab.com/3ho8fbx ... I am very mindful of the need to contain council spending and his plan would deliver a highly positive result for the cost to ratepayers of just the administration. If we are serious about saving and preserving our history, then we have got to give our property owners and body corporates an incentive to provide safe and secure residences and places of business, while preserving the culture of Cuba Street and elsewhere. We can't sit on our hands and do nothing. The time to get going is now. If we don't do something about our wonderful old buildings, another earthquake will make the decision for us and people will be killed. There are few tangible benefits from strengthening a building, making it very difficult for an owner to raise money for the work. We can't save them all and I will ask Wellingtonians to draw up a list of historic non-earthquake-compliant buildings, so that people can rank them. We'll make the list as long as possible, but the availability of money will determine which ones stay and which ones go. There is no getting away from the fact that some old buildings will have to be demolished, and when these have been decided, we should acknowledge their demolition and be thankful the best of the best remain safe and future-proofed. For our most important heritage buildings, though, the public could be expected to pay some of the cost of their preservation. There is public value in retaining buildings like St Gerards Monastery above Oriental Bay.