Breaking deadlocks in Christchurch

Christchurch has a unique opportunity at the moment to solve a number of ongoing problems.

With a few key decisions, and a bit of political leadership we can fix the Anglican Cathedral, get a better convention centre, and bring Cathedral square to life for no extra spending. I make this claims based on the following principles: there should be no new taxpayer or ratepayer spending, it requires a transparent process, and follows ‘best practice’ urban design and environmental principles.

Before taking up his role as foreign minister Brownlee argued that the blueprint is a living document and so is important to update thinking on this occasionally — this follows Brownlee’s logic.

Start by cancelling the existing convention centre project, this project is now five years late, has been reinvented 3 times, and has become a zombie project that is damaging the middle of the city. It still has no public business case, the govenrment is unclear who will own it once it is built. Lets stop pouring good money after bad and fix this up.

Then distribute the current funding for the (around $280 million) to the following projects:

1. Give $40 million to ChristChurch Cathedral and Cathedral square. This will provide the lions share of the full repair cost for the Cathedral and create a new $10 or so million dollar fund to maintain the Cathedral to produce events, and cultural activities for the city. An independent trust can be set up to administer this, make sure the church’s needs are met, but also produce public activities and events are regularly occurring in the square. This solves the councils ongoing maintenance concerns, and the Church’s fundraising problems. This requires $20m fundraising (versus current $50m), but should produce around $500,000 a year to maintain Cathedral and activities in the square. The trust can have members from Council, the church, Ngai Tahu and important cultural and business groups
2. Put $200 million to the new stadium to make it a world class covered stadium, exhibition hall, and convention centre with best practice environmental and urban design standards. Engage with the world leading architects to make this a special project for Christchurch culture, sport and business. This $200m will be added to the $250m the CCC had already committed, plus whatever other private funding to support it.This fits in with the current multi-purpose stadium ideas being currently discussed, including a recent example that already proposed an exhibition hall.
3. This creates an amazing opportunity to think about what the centre of the city needs. Get Regenerate Christchurch and the CCC to work with the people of the city to plan the two blocks north of Cathedral Square with the community to create a mix-used use, vibrant, and active part of city — include more housing to get people living in the middle of the city which is still the single greatest problem in the rebuild.

This proposal creates an opportunity for immediate start of the Cathedral. It gets the stalled convention centre project going, and in a much better part of the city. As Brownlee indicated, the blueprint is a living document, and the convention centre has turned into a zombie project that doesn’t currently seem to fit the city. The proposal creates a really exciting new opportunity for community and local led planning process in the central two blocks.

The areas could engage with Ngāi Tahu, Te Ara or university for these parts — is this where the Ngāi Tahu cultural centre goes? The businesses that are relying on the convention centre will still get supported, but ten minutes walk east in a place that needs development long term. It’s transparent as all the projects are public and can be run through good quality processes. Not only is the Cathedral returned to its place at the cultural heart of the city, but Cathedral square also gets an ongoing strategy and financing for activation. Importantly this requires no new spending from either central or local government, and if well run might even leave a few tens of millions to put into residential red zone public projects out east.

All it needs is some political leadership.