Salient. Victoria University Students Newspaper. Volume 38, No 1. March 4, 1975
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The second diagram on this page is a very rough outline of a possible basic flat design, of about 100 sq metres. I am no architect, as the screams of anyone so inclined looking at this will tell you, but a rough plan was necessary for estimating the total numbers the scheme could take. It is not envisaged that all flats be the same - there is plenty of scope in the block for imaginative while still low-cost building. Anyway, in the absence of a full feasibility report, this outline would be able to accommodate around 230 students. It is rather pointless with page break inflation in the building industry running at around 30% to estimate costs to any degree of accuracy, but rents of the scheme, if built now would work out around $9 - $10 dollars a week per person. This seems to me a far better proposition than the alternative proposal for redeveloping this area, the Trinity Hall idea, a traditional hostel design. In the present situation, the cost of building this Hall would be far higher, the running costs several times greater, quite aside from the aesthetic disaster of a 10 storey tower rising out of Claremont Tce. The proposal above is envisaged as being in units of two or three floors, with two flats per floor, but this is obviously open to discussion and hopefully a full report on the area, developed along these lines will be commissioned.
The student roll is at the moment fairly stable, as the figures elsewhere in this issue show, and there is an acute housing shortage.
As the population grows (and if something happens to bursaries) more students will want to come to Victoria and live in central Wellington. In the time we have at the moment it is a good idea to get some planning done for the future, especially as concerns accommodation.
This scheme is going forward to the University's Standing Committee on Student Accommodation meeting next week, but it is still open for discussion, criticism and amendment. Only through this sort of interaction with the people who are to be using the scheme, students, can a proposal really acceptable be devised.
The Student Representatives on the Standing Committe on Student Accommodation are: Peter Aagaard; Paul Swain; and Anthony Ward.