Redeveloping the Sarjeant Gallery
We developed the detailed business case for the redevelopment of Aotearoa New Zealand's premier regional art gallery, the Sarjeant in Whanganui
The Sarjeant Gallery was constructed in Whanganui in 1909, and is an iconic building – but a century later, was earthquake prone and met just 3% of the New Building Standard. The Gallery needed a business case for national funding to support its redevelopment.
When we became involved, considerable work had been done to achieve regional funding support, but complete redevelopment was well beyond the capabilities of Whanganui acting on its own. So we conducted a detailed economic analysis of how the Gallery added value to our national economy and the health of the arts sector.
Our work highlighted the network of local, regional and national benefits – some economic, some cultural, some social – that flow from the Sarjeant, and made the case for co-investment between the Crown, the council, and the community.
The work involved extensive collaboration with the Sarjeant Gallery team, the redevelopment project team, and officials from Kānoa overseeing regional development funds. And on the back of the engagement was considerable economic and financial modelling, showing how and where benefits from the project could be achieved.
Crown support for the project was achieved in 2019, just in time for the Gallery to have an extremely rocky road through the redevelopment project: the COVID pandemic arrived, work stopped and started, contractors ran into post-lockdown difficulties, and budgets expanded as heritage and engineering issues came to light.
But in 2025, due to the persistence of the project team and the Whanganui community, the Sarjeant Gallery reopened – and it's a complete triumph.
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