Media release from Tairawhiti DHB

Staff from the Morris Adair building at Gisborne Hopsital's Ormond Road campus say goodbye to their offices tomorrow afternoon, and move to the Tangata Rite building on Peel Street for 'business as usual' from Monday 1 October.

The relocation of 85 Tairawhiti District Health employees is the DHB's response to an engineer's report that the 47-year-old Morris Adair building is an earthquake prone building.

Chief Executive Jim Green said the new building at 110 Peel Street has been refurbished to house Community Mental Health and Addictions, and Well Child Services.

A range of other services will also be based in Peel Street from Monday, including School Dental administration, Te Puna Wairoa (Planning and Funding), Public Health, Health Promotion, Health Protection, Needs Assessment Service Coordination (NASC) and Cervical Screening services.

Mr Green said staff had embraced the move positively and had managed to clear and pack their offices with minimal disruption to workflow and patient services.

"We'll begin on Monday with a formal blessing of the new building, a briefing for everyone who will work from there, and a shared morning tea."

Mr Green said the Morris Adair building would be closed with an appropriate blessing, once everything had been removed. He added that the decision to relocate was a prudent one, given the findings of the Earthquake Structural Assessment report, by engineers Spencer Holmes.

"The report doesn't suggest the building would collapse in an earthquake - just that it is not as resistant as a modern building would be."

It rates at 20 -25% of New Building Standards which classifies the building as grade D or 'high risk'.

"The Morris Adair building has performed well in previous earthquakes, however the engineer's report classified it as earthquake prone. As a result a decision was made to relocate all the staff and clinics currently situated there, and then to make further assessments about the future of the building."

BACKGROUND
The Morris Adair building is a five-storey, reinforced concrete framed building constructed in 1965.

It was originally built as a Maternity Hospital with Elderly Care wards. In the 1990s with the reduced birth rate a maternity area was created in the main hospital and in that era residential elderly care services were transferred to the community.

The building remained vacant until 2003 when it was refurbished utilising funds from the Morris Adair Trust to house clinical and administrative services including relocating public health, community mental health and NGO services from central city locations.