Friday, March 29, 2024

AgResearch’s Lincoln building plan is ready

Neal Wallace
AgResearch and Lincoln University will build their own science facilities at and next to Lincoln University after their plan to collaborate was rejected.
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Last year the Government rejected a business case for the two entities to collaborate on a $206m, 27,000 square metre science and education hub so they are now developing their own laboratories.

AgResearch chief executive Tom Richardson says a fresh business case will be presented to Research, Science and Innovation Minister Megan Woods next week to build independently owned facilities for its Lincoln staff.

Lincoln University has plans to build its own new facility on the now abandoned joint facility site, where the demolished earthquake damaged Hilgendorf building was.

A second science laboratory is planned for the campus later.

Richardson said AgResearch has entered into a conditional agreement to buy land from the university on which to build.

“Once completed, we believe the proposed facility in Lincoln will replicate the same benefits for land-based research brought about by collaboration as our new Joint Food Science Facility (JFSF) in Palmerston North, which will open next year.”

Long-held plans to centralise AgResearch staff from Invermay near Dunedin and Ruakura in Hamilton to Grasslands in Palmerston North and Lincoln are dependent on developing infrastructure, he says.

AgResearch declined to reveal the cost or size of the new building before Woods gets the proposal.

Lincoln acting vice-chancellor Professor Bruce McKenzie says the proposed university laboratory will be part of a new research precinct and follows settlement of a $45m earthquake claim with its insurers earlier this year.

The settlement allows the university to embark on a 10-year campus improvement programme, including the science facility, which will be designed to facilitate collaboration with AgResearch.

“However, the campus development programme is more than just buildings and landscapes,” he says.

“It is about developing a more modern, vibrant and safe campus, providing a positive campus experience for our students and staff and growing our future as a world-class research and teaching precinct.”

Other plans include renewable energy sources such as solar, new student spaces, an upgrade of the university recreation centre, another new science facility in the southern part of the campus, new student accommodation and  a new joint postgraduate school on campus.

In 2017 the university and AgResearch proposed building a joint facility on the site of the old Hilgendorf building.

It would have housed up to 700 staff from the university’s faculty of agriculture and live sciences, AgResearch scientists and administrators and have had space leased to DairyNZ.

University staff and students and AgResearch scientists would have worked alongside each other.

AgResearch was to have invested $80m and Lincoln the balance with construction due for completion this year.

There were plans to extend the building to the other side of Springs Rd when Plant and Food Research, Landcare and Dairy NZ shifted onto the site.

But the Government rejected the business case.

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