Future of Cathedral Square up in the air
Neighbours started complaining in the 1970s. At last, the house has been deemed a health hazard and is coming down.
News of Christ Church Cathedral’s probable mothballing has thrown the future of Cathedral Square, and the identity of the city, up in the air.
Yesterday the Government refused a request for $60 million or more from Christ Church Cathedral Reinstatement Ltd (CCRL), which has a $75m to $85m shortfall in its $209m to $219m budget.
CCRL chair Mark Stewart said the news was “incredibly sad and disappointing”, and the board would meet on August 19 to discuss its implications. “With the Government’s decision, the pathway to completion is much longer, and mothballing is now likely,” he said.
Others suggest that it could be a chance for a fresh start for Cathedral Square.
Almost $30m of public money has already gone into the cathedral’s restoration – $25m from taxpayers, and $3m from city ratepayers, as well as other forms of central and local government assistance.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis said the Government would not put more cash into what was a private and religious space.
Just this week the city council agreed to hand over $7m to CCRL, the second tranche of a $10m ratepayer grant.
Stewart said CCRL would ask the council to pause the payment.
Acting mayor Pauline Cotter said council interim chief executive Mary Richardson would talk with CCRL next week about the grant. She did not know what would be done with the money.
Hopes were also dashed yesterday about the completion of another Cathedral Square project, The Grand hospitality and visitor complex in the old central post office. It has been canned due to a lack of cash, after years of planning. Landlord Gordon Chamberlain said he had retrieved the keys from The Grand director Darin Rainbird on Thursday after he failed to find another investor.
While arguably the heart of the city has moved towards Cashel St and the Avon River, the cathedral image remains prominent in places like the city council logo.
Michael Grimshaw, associate sociology professor at Canterbury University, asked what stopping the cathedral project meant for the Square. “What is the point of Cathedral Square if there is no cathedral? It’s basically a giant big traffic island,” he said.
He said the Square was “already dead”. “What is going to be the use of that space? Do you put a road back through it?” Colombo St ran in front of the cathedral until the 1960s.
Grimshaw asked what would replace the cathedral as “the symbol of a new Christchurch”, and said the city’s narrative should be remade.
He said it could provide an opportunity to put the city’s Anglican past behind it and “create a 21st-century, modern city”.
Wigram MP Megan Woods urged consensus on the fate of the building, and said the issue had become divisive since the earthquakes. “I encourage the current Government to work very closely with both the city council and with the cathedral community,” she said. “Christchurch people have made it clear that they do want to see everything post-earthquake fixed.
“We’re over a decade on now that we don’t want to see piles of rubble in our city.”
Cotter said CCRL was “just going to have to find a plan B”.
“It’s not all over … It can’t be over. I mean, what’s the alternative? Get the bulldozers in? … so let’s stay positive about it,” she said. “We just have to be patient.”
Opposition leader Chris Hipkins said he hoped the cathedral would be finished, and his Government had changed the law to ensure it could be rebuilt.
Philip Burdon, a former Cabinet minister who co-led the campaign to save the cathedral, said mothballing was the best option in the circumstances.
“The reality is, it is going to be an unhappy economy for a couple of years. After mothballing for a couple of years, we should be in a more positive environment for both public and private funding. I certainly do not regard demolition as a good option.”
People in Cathedral Square yesterday were divided on what should happen next.
Cathedral Square food truck owner Hata Hiromi said that while the Square was beautiful and full of people 15 years ago, it did not feel safe now. She wanted to see the building restored.
“It’s not very good in this area, especially at night. Even the tourists come and they can’t see anything here – so they go to another place.”
Fellow food caravan owner Sabry Abdelatif said Cathedral Square was dying, and he wanted the cathedral demolished.
“I think we should take it down and just start new again. It would be safer, and more beautiful, and stronger,” he said.
Lorraine Flight, from Rotorua, said she hadn’t been in Christchurch for two years, and was shocked to see the lack of progress.
“I think it is a lost case, quite honestly. Give up and build something else that represents that cathedral. Start afresh. I am totally disappointed and quite upset by how it looks now.”
Additional reporting by Sophie Lapsley.
It is more than just a suburban eyesore. This Christchurch house became such a health hazard that the city council finally slapped a red sticker on it after more than 50 years of on-and-off frustration.
The property, at 102 Colombo St in Sydenham, has long to be known to locals.
Items are piled more than 2m high in the yard, with the remains of caravans, boats, as many as 14 cars, a bathtub, vehicle tyres, old engines, and metal and timber scraps visible above the front fence. Some items have sat there for 15 years.
Inside the house, items are also stacked almost ceiling-high.
The property was also known as the place where the owners would sell Christmas trees ever year.
In December, the city council successfully prosecuted them.
The property has now been sold, and new owner Habitus Group will clear it and build over-60s units.
“We like to turn negatives into positives, so we saw it as bit of an opportunity,” Habitus Group director Lee Sampson said. “I’ve known the property for a long time, as many people have. There were some loud sighs of relief from around the neighbourhood when we bought it.”
The Christchurch District Court’s December ruling gave the owners three months to remove “accumulated items” from both outside and inside the property, resolve weather tightness issues, remove overgrown vegetation, and clear away “any remaining debris and/or hazards”.
It banned any occupation of the house in the meantime.
In February, the elderly owners put the property up for sale, with the council health notices still fastened to the gate. The couple have been living elsewhere, and have now bought another home.
Habitus has just settled the sale, but Sampson said the couple has a few weeks to collect any items they want.
Habitus paid $811,000 for the 960m² property in as-is-where-is condition, with the house deemed unsalvageable. Of the $710,000 rating valuation, just $20,000 is for the 109-year-old house and the remaining $690,000 is land value.
Sampson said the cleanup would take “tens of thousands of man hours”.
The property’s LIM (Land Information Memorandum) report reveals council staff were dealing with complaints about the site as far back as the early 1970s, with a local priest getting in touch on behalf of neighbours, and the council’s law firm consulted for help.
It has had the same owners all along. Internal council correspondence, dated 1973, said “it is agreed the appearance of the property leaves much to be desired”, following a letter to the editor of the Christchurch Star.
Complaints referred to the large number of cars in various states of dismantlement on the property, and the owner “wrecking and panel beating vehicles at night”.
In 1974, the council considered taking legal proceedings but abandoned the idea over lack of evidence as the activities appeared to be spasmodic, it said.
In 1975, it was still struggling to deal with “annoyance caused to neighbours by the activities carried out” on the property.
This week the Christchurch City Council’s head of regulatory compliance, Tracey Weston, said their compliance team stepped in this time as the property “was deemed a nuisance under the Health Act”.
“Staff are ensuring that the new owners are making arrangements for the nuisance to be abated,” she said.
Habitus now faces the tough job of clearing the site, starting in October. It has obtained resource consent to build six over-60s units, with one, two or three bedrooms, on the long narrow site.
As a condition of the consent, it must remove and discard a portion of the soil, as the council said it was likely contaminated from the accumulated items.
Sampson said there were “just all sorts” of items littering the property.
“There is so much to be cleared out of there. It will be a highly labour-intensive operation. The mind boggles.”
As a current community board member and former council staff member, he said he was already aware of the state of the property.
“Finally, 50 years of council legal action is coming to an end. It just shows you, there is limited controls for councils and what they can do.”
He said once the site was fully cleaned up, they would build attractive and sustainable units that would be a positive for the neighbourhood.
“Finally, 50 years of council legal action is coming to an end. It just shows you, there is limited controls for councils and what they can do.” Lee Sampson
Habitus Group director