For some time, the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind has been looking at various plans for the refurbishment of the ground floor of its building at 121 Adelaide Road. More recently, and with our agreement in principle, these plans have expanded to include the ground floor of 113 Adelaide Road, also owned by the Foundation. That is where our offices are located.

For some time, the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind has been looking at various plans for the refurbishment of the ground floor of its building at 121 Adelaide Road. More recently, and with our agreement in principle, these plans have expanded to include the ground floor of 113 Adelaide Road, also owned by the Foundation. That is where our offices are located.

The Foundation has now approved a plan which Blind Citizens NZ is also happy with. Although it will mean we will be using a shared meeting facility instead of our own dedicated meeting room, we are confident that the new layout will be a lot better than our current accommodation. We expect the shared meeting room will be a lot more comfortable and we also expect better access to transport such as taxis. Also since our tenanted area reduces to about half what we currently have, we expect to achieve some cost savings.

Our Board has been considering accommodation options for several years now. The Board has now endorsed the proposed plan, which will settle our accommodation for the next few years.

There is much for the Foundation to do before timeframes for the refurbishment work will be made known to us. The earliest this will commence is the beginning of 2014, but most likely it will be around July 2014. We will need to move temporarily when the work starts, hopefully to some other part of the building.