Durban City Hall. Picture: Khaya Ngwenya/African News Agency (ANA)
ETHEKWINI Municipality officials responsible for the renovation of the Durban City Hall were confident that the work will be completed by the middle of next year. But they need more that R50 million to carry out the work.
Addressing eThekwini Executive Committee (Exco) members during the meeting this week, Laura Hunt from the Architecture division explained that some of the delays in the repair work had been as a result of the building’s age.
In addition to this, permission for any work had to be sought from Amafa, the body that is responsible for heritage monuments in KwaZulu-Natal.
She said that aside from the wear and tear associated with the 113- year-old building, it had also been badly affected by the 2022 floods, and this demanded that a comprehensive assessment be conducted on the kind of repairs that were required.
Part of the work meant attending to work in stages, from immediate, to mid-term and long term repairs.
The areas that had been affected mainly were the ceiling and the floor, which had decayed and required replacing.
Exco and council members had raised eyebrows after learning that the initial cost of repairs, which was R17m, had shot to over R50m. This resulted in members visiting the site.
According to Hunt, the repair work included ensuring the proper ventilation of the building and work on the auditorium.
“If the funding was to be made available, the work will be complete by June 2025,” she told Exco members.
Exco member Andre Beetge described the site visit this week as eye-opening, adding that it had enabled councillors to make a decision from an informed basis.
“The problem is, when you are working with an old building, when trying to fix one minor thing you are exposed to another one, and having seen the building, there is an appreciation of the massive work and the money needed to carry it through,” said Beetge.
Councillor Mdu Nkosi said while the money required for the repair work appeared to be huge, there were long-term gains in the pipeline for the city if it was to be properly done.
“I argued before that when the repairs were conducted on the building over the years, this had been done on an ad-hoc basis when, in fact, the building, owing to its age, needed massive work to be undertaken,” said Nkosi.
He added that because the building was used for weddings and other functions by members of the public, the money required was a worthy investment. “One will be happy once the project is complete because this is an important asset to the city,” Nkosi said.
Approval for the R65.7million budget required will now be sought from the council at the next sitting.