On Mar 2, 2012, at 4:31 PM, Paul Stenquist wrote: > That's so unfortunate. I'm sure that there are architects an engineers in > this world that could dvise a plan to save the cathedral. Demolishing it > seems so wrong.
There was one heritage engineering expert quoted on the radio news this afternoon. I forget his name but he's based overseas. He says it's definitely possible, which anything is when given enough budget and time. Whether it's feasible is another matter. Technically it could probably be saved, but the numbers are sobering. Just to rebuild what we had was estimated at $100M, and they said that was a "shortfall" which, I would assume, means "over and above the insurance payout". Partial rebuild with modern extensions, $50M. Given its iconic status I actually think it may be worth it, but that's a number they pulled out of thin air so the actual budget could be even higher. At the moment they don't even know if the land will be suitable to build anything on the site, so it's possible that they may have to rebuild somewhere else. As I'm sure you'd expect there's a massive outcry starting so who knows what's actually going to happen. I'm not envious of the Bishop at all, she's in a very tight position. Maybe she needs an audience with the Queen to raise some funds from the Anglican Church (maybe I could send Cotty around). The Mayor seems resigned to its fate but he has no control over the decision anyway. I know I keep saying this but the scale of demolition in our city is unprecedented. The photographer who's contracted to document the process wrote on Facebook today: "Can't think of an intersection within the cordon which has buildings on more than 2 corners now." There are couple of entire blocks which will only have a couple of buildings left. I just hope we make good use of all this new space. Cheers, Dave -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
