What's happening in the Mt Eden Station area over the holiday period

At the end of this week, most of the Mt Eden Station team will be taking a well-earned break for a couple of weeks. This also means a break from most construction-related activity for our neighbours over the Christmas period. 

It’s been a busy few months for the Link Alliance’s Mt Eden team since we mobilised to site. We’ve made good progress on demolition of vacant buildings in Nikau, Flower and Shaddock Streets and have also started geotechnical and utility investigations to test ground conditions before we start building City Rail Link’s Mt Eden Station and tunnels. 

For those in the Flower Street / Shaddock Street area, we will be re-opening Flower Street south by Friday 20th December while works have stopped, and re-closing it on Monday 6th January 2020.

While the majority of our work will cease over the Christmas period, between 27 December and 5 January, we will be using KiwiRail’s Block of Lines (when no trains are running on the network) to safely undertake two pieces of work. This includes demolition of the remaining buildings located alongside the rail corridor at the rear of our site office at 97 Mt Eden (from 3-5 January only) and borehole investigations within the rail corridor near Mt Eden Road and Normanby Road to determine soil conditions ahead of future City Rail Link (CRL) track works in the area. 

Works to re-start on 6 January

On 6 January, the Mt Eden construction team will return to site. 

At this time, our demolition contractor, Ward Demolition, is also scheduled to move to the opposite end of the station construction site to demolish the old industrial sheds located between Ngahura and Ruru Streets. Then, from mid-January, Ward will start demolishing the remaining vacant buildings on Ruru Street, including those formerly occupied by Dolphin Pacific and Crystal Motors.  

Ward also plans to start demolishing the old Life Church complex, starting from its Shaddock Street end and working progressively towards its Mt Eden Road frontage. The entire Life Church property at 95 Mt Eden Road is expected to be demolished by the end of February. 

Did you know? The land that the former Promise Keepers building sits on (our site office) forms part of a proposed new road stretching from Mt Eden Road to the future Mt Eden Station building, which will be built on the former South Pacific Timber site and accessed via an extended Ruru Street. The proposal will also see Flower Street south extended to meet the new Ruru Street extension and Nikau Street extended to join Ngahura Street. 

Busy year ahead for the CRL project at Mt Eden

There are some exciting project milestones to be reached in 2020, as the Mt Eden team prepares the construction site for the arrival and launch of the seven-metre-diameter tunnel boring machine that will create CRL’s tunnels between Mt Eden and Auckland’s city centre. 

January will see the start of earthworks at the Flower and Nikau St intersection to create a tiered platform for a piling rig to work from. The rig will install 66 piles of between eight and 38 metres in length to create the U-shaped retaining wall that forms the CRL tunnel portal. Flower Street South will be temporarily diverted on to the land left vacant at 6 Flower Street and 16 Nikau Street to move vehicles away from the intersection while tunnel portal construction works are underway. Piling is currently scheduled to begin around mid-February.  

March will bring the start of bulk excavation of the two trenches that will firstly be used to launch and operate the CRL tunnel boring machine but which will eventually contain the new CRL rail tracks in and out of Mt Eden. 

Concrete crusher arrives next month

Concrete crusher to arrive in January 

If you’ve been to the Mt Eden Station recently – or if you live or work in the station area - you will have noticed a growing stockpile of concrete material being stored alongside the rail corridor on the old South Pacific Timber site.   

From next month, a concrete crusher is set to arrive on site to deal with this waste material, crunching it down to a smaller size to be re-used to build temporary roads within our construction site. 

By recycling the concrete in this way, we can reduce the amount of waste taken off site to landfill and the number of truck movements to and from the site.   

We’ll be taking a number of steps to minimise dust and noise nuisance from crusher, including using a water mister / water cannon to dampen the material and reduce dust, and a three-sided screen to reduce noise for nearby residents. The machine will run during work hours only – 7am to 7pm, Monday to Friday, and Saturdays 7am to 2pm – until we’ve dealt with all the concrete waste from the buildings we’ve demolished. 

We’ve also salvaged a lot of other reusable material from the buildings ahead of demolition – the majority of which has gone to Tonga to help rebuild cyclone-ravaged communities. 

Meet the team

We thought you might be interested to find out more about the people involved in the project, so we will be profiling members of our team.  First up is our Mt Eden Station Project Manager, Thibaut L’Hopital. 

Introducing our Mt Eden Station Project Manager – Thibaut L’Hopital 

Although he hails from Versailles, near Paris in France, Thibaut has spent the majority of his engineering career in construction management in the UK and New Zealand. He is the lucky husband of a fine Kiwi woman and is awaiting the birth of his third child. 

Thibaut’s role at the Link Alliance is to project manage the Mt Eden Station works, including the new station building, platforms and the cut and cover tunnels that will link to the CRL tunnel portal. His team is also preparing the Mt Eden construction area for the launch of the CRL tunnel boring machine. 

In his spare time, Thibaut (pronounced ‘Tee-bo’) enjoys road cycling with the Mt Eden Cycle Shop group, spending time with his Kiwi family and competing in triathlons. He’s looking forward to seeing the Mt Eden works progressing and to catching the first train on the CRL line in 2024!    

Community information sessions re-start in February

Since September, Link Alliance’s Mt Eden Station team has hosted regular fortnightly information sessions for the community at its office at 97 Mt Eden Road. It’s been great to meet so many locals and also those from further afield who are following the CRL project with interest. 

While there will be no sessions held over January while many people are away on holiday, we’ll be re-opening the ‘Mt Eden Info Hub’ on Wednesday 5 February. Come along from 4.30pm - 6.30pm to meet the team and find out more about upcoming Mt Eden works and the wider CRL project. 

The info hub will run the first and third Wednesday of the month. If you can’t make the info hub sessions but would like to talk to the Mt Eden team, please phone us on 0800 CRL TALK (press option 5 for Mt Eden) or email us at mteden@linkalliance.co.nz to arrange a suitable alternative time for a chat.