"Canberra News, Views and Opinion"
The Canberra Times has the news that Ply ACT is singing with the Choir Invisible which will cause disruption to numerous major builds around town:
Ply ACT issued a statement late on Monday night confirming it had entered into voluntary administration with sites affected including the $550 million Nishi Complex in New Acton, the Astin Apartments and the Rex Hotel.
Director David Murphy said the decision was not taken lightly and he would work with the administrator, Alan Hayes, of Hayes Advisory, to return to full capacity the affected construction sites around Canberra.
All Ply employees wages had been paid up to date./blockquote>
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Norwegian Wood performed by Gaudi?
This explains the crowd of confused looking workers that were gathered around the Rex complex this morning.
So not only is it the ugliest building in town, it’s also going to be unfinished?
I don’t get in to Civic that often (or NewActon – whatever) but if this is the building I think it is, given the length of time it’s taken to build I’m not surprised they went bust.
Mysteryman said :
at least its interesting – surely Canberra commercial architecture must be amongst the more boring in the world. Even Sydney has 2 or 3 interesting buildings.
dtc said :
Interesting good.
Give me boring over that monstrosity any day of the week.
I would tend to call it a confused building.
It does not respond to the local context but appears to be a spaceship landed from space. The glass and alucabond commercial architectural language in canberra is so ‘inhuman’ but this is ‘other worldly’.
when does the scaffold come down
Beats belconnens’ concrete pimples
Lots and lots of unpaid subcontractors. I heard the administrator on the radio saying that all the “employees” entitlements were secure, but unfortunately most of the people working on the site were subcontractors, i.e. unsecured creditors and at the bottom of the payment list.
Wacky conspiracy theory time! Isn’t this the building that the Dept Climate Change and Energy Efficiency is supposed to be leasing? And now it would be very handy for such lease to no longer be available …. as the department itself is going to be disappeared? : )
Masquara said :
Please be silenced
I would hate to also be one of the people who’ve bought an apartment there off the plan.
Masquara said :
Climate change are already there, sitting in the building with all their staff and presumably the Commonwealth has signed up a nice long lease, so it will either be climante change or whatever it becomes or some other lucky department.
Actually, the office part of the building is finished more or less (not all floors are fitted out, but that is interior work not construction work). The cinema is up and running and there are a couple of other tenants. The office part is the half facing civic, covered in wood.
Its the apartment part of the building that is still under construction (the shell is completed but they generally arent up to windows or doors). I’m not sure about the hotel – thats probably affected as well. The apartment part is the one facing the National Museum – no wood, the facade is just all uneven.
This at a time when construction is already waning. The electricians on site have already left the job as far as I know, because their company hadn’t been paid, putting more pressure on the local sparkies looking for work. I just had a close call with Centrelink myself due to redundancies. Thankfully it didn’t come to that as new job starts next week, but my old employer has tradies knocking on his door looking for a job, unfortunately having to turn them away. That’s the way construction is in Canberra though, next week there could be a shortage of the same people currently sitting on their bums wondering how to pay the mortgage.
I also wonder who will come to the rescue and finish off the job so that investors can move in and start repaying their loans.
liability said :
Yep. That’s why the move from using employees to using “contractors” has been so popular.