The Southland Museum's Tisbury storage facility, which will house items unable to concurrently be display within the new museum, is on track to be completed by December 2023 following the recent installation of its roof.

The Tisbury storage facility, part of the Invercargill City Council's (ICC) $39.4 million Project 1225, also includes a redeveloped Queens Park museum and separate tuatara enclosure.

Work at the Tisbury site officially started in December, with the turning of the sod and blessing.

Council Programme Director Lee Butcher said he was stoked to be at this part of the project.

“This facility is an extremely important part of Project 1225, given that it will be the place here many of our 4.5 million collections items will be safely stored.

“I’m pleased to say we are on track to have the storage facility complete in December 2023, ready for the collection move.”

The museum team were still hard at work, with the collection packing nearly complete, Butcher said.

Project 1225 Lead Councillor Grant Dermody said it was reassuring to see the halfway point reached.

“It gives me absolute confidence, as it should the whole community, that the museum rebuild project is on track. In less than six months we will have our first building under Project 1225 completed, which will only have a flow-on effect for the rest of it.”

The storage facility will include shelved areas for the various collection objects, cold storage areas, offices and workrooms, and a car park area. There will also be a public space where members of the community can view pieces of the collection for research purposes.

Butcher said contractors ABL had been working hard to get to this point, which included the construction of the building, and installation of the plant room and firefighting water tank.

“The ABL team has been head down since work started back in December 2022, and it’s because of them that Tisbury is on track to be finished this December, and ready to house our collection.”

Collection items will start being moved to the storage facility when it is complete in December and will be finished in time to allow demolition of the current museum building to begin in April 2024.