Christchurch turns back on cathedral to become a river city

Analysis: Christchurch is led by influencers.
Not the social media kind, but, generally, people born into money and property ownership, or who have made something of themselves in business or sport; the law or politics. Ngāi Tahu is firmly on that list, too, with the iwi powerhouse’s mark on the city becoming ever more visible.
They are Ōtautahi’s movers and shakers; the city power brokers.
Historically, the Anglican Church has been at the centre of the city’s influence by dint of its economic muscle as a central city property owner, including its ownership of the city’s most prominent building, Christ Church Cathedral.
The cathedral was also a striking example of how religion was woven into the city, not just in real estate but culturally. (Just look at the number of faith-based schools.)
Last week, more than 13 years after the killer earthquake severely damaged the cathedral and toppled its spire, it was announced rebuild work on the Category 1 listed building would halt.
(In the merry-go-round of figures, the restoration cost ballooned to $248 million, but was trimmed to $219m, leaving a shortfall of about $85m.)
The genesis of the cathedral’s mothballing emerged in April, with news, carried on the front page of The Press newspaper, the cathedral’s reinstatement project needed $30m by August or work would stop, indefinitely.
If the threat was designed to engender public sympathy or support it backfired.
The majority of Christchurch people, including letter-writers to The Press, didn’t blink at the prospect of leaving the cathedral a wreck.
Earlier this month came the final straw – Finance Minister Nicola Willis rejected a request for taxpayers to contribute $60m.
In his plea-that-fell-on-deaf-ears in April, Christ Church Cathedral Reinstatement chairperson Mark Stewart asked: “How can we punctuate the end of the earthquake era without having the cathedral rebuilt?”
He called the building “the beating heart of Christchurch”. “It’s just not beating right now. Our job is to get it beating again but we need the money to do that.”
There’s evidence the city has a new beating heart, near the Avon River.
While Cathedral Square has been reduced to a desolate transit area, the destinations abuzz with people are the lively bar and restaurant scene along Oxford Terrace, and the delights of Riverside Market.
Mothballing the cathedral marks this seismic jolt, and, seemingly, a shift in the city’s power dynamic.
The Anglican Church and its land-owning entity Church Property Trustees, shaken by the 2011 quakes and diminished in the public consciousness by years-long arguments over the cathedral, no longer seems to sit at the city’s top table of influence.
I wrote a comprehensive retrospective on the cathedral debate in April. But the background is still worth digging into to recall the power dynamics exercised.
In 2012, a year after the quake, work began to demolish the cathedral, which had been issued with an unsafe building notice. It was deemed too damaged to repair – plus it was woefully under-insured – so the plan was to bring it down to the height of a few metres. A newer, modern cathedral would rise from the skeleton.
But the Great Christchurch Buildings Trust, headed by ex-politicians Jim Anderton and Philip Burdon, intervened, sparking a protracted legal fight which went all the way to the Supreme Court. The Anglican Church won, and opted for a modern design costing about $60m.
But uncertainty swirled, and the arm-wrestling continued – with legal threats ever present – for years, up until a crucial meeting in 2017, at which the Anglican Synod overwhelmingly voted to rebuild the cathedral. The decisive factor was a generous funding offer from the government.
At that meeting, Lianne Dalziel, a former Labour MP for Christchurch East who was then the Christchurch Mayor, stood alongside the National Party’s Nicky Wagner, the minister for greater Christchurch regeneration. Representatives of the council and government, side-by-side, advocated for a rebuild and said they’d contribute to the cost.
Dalziel tells Newsroom the city had lost so much of its built heritage already, she felt the city should do what it could to reinstate the cathedral. The council had no reason to doubt the cost estimates, she says.
“There was a degree of confidence about what could be done, but there was no mention at the time of a cost-overrun of this significance,” says Dalziel, who concedes the recent cost blowout suggests the original figures were a substantial understatement.
(That seems a re-writing of history. An early quantity surveyor’s report put the cathedral’s rebuild cost at $215m, and in 2013, the church’s estimate for restoring the cathedral using the same materials at $221m. Newsroom has been told figures of up to $300m were bandied about at the pivotal 2017 Synod meeting.)
Dalziel doesn’t regret lobbying the Synod to pursue a rebuild. “It doesn’t seem as if those that are responsible for reinstatement are giving up.”
Indeed, Bishop Peter Carrell said last week there were no plans to demolish the cathedral, and fundraising would continue. “We will also continue the search for international donors.”
Other projects have fallen foul of the Cathedral Square curse, Dalziel notes.
Earlier this month, Darin Rainbird’s ambitious plans for the old central post office, known as The Grand, collapsed, and the keys returned to the landlord.
A striking building designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban – designer of the city’s transitional cathedral, featuring cardboard tubes – planned for the corner of Hereford and Colombo Sts, hasn’t materialised.
(Bucking the trend is the recently opened building, The Regent, the home to law firms Buddle Findlay, Anderson Lloyd, and Malley & Co.)
“We had the black swan event that people talk about, and it’s impacted on a range of projects, and the cathedral’s one of them,” Dalziel says. “Cathedral Square has suffered significantly as a result.”
To rub salt in the wounds, and reinforce the cascade of riverside developments, last week it was reported a consent had been lodged for an up-to-$100m development of the old Noahs/Rydges hotel along Oxford Tce.
What was the political calculation, at a national level?
We’ve already referred to Willis, the finance minister, knocking back a $60m request.
Back in 2012, the earthquake recovery minister Gerry Brownlee, of the National Party, took a similar, hands-off approach, saying a decision to save the cathedral was up to the Anglican Church. (For the record, the church owns the land and the building.)
Weeks after Brownlee’s comments, the John Key-led government announced a new blueprint for the city’s redevelopment and rebuild, including plans for a convention centre (opened in 2021), stadium and metro sports centre (still being built).
Given the weight of all those shiny, new projects, why would the government step in to “save” the cathedral? Cynics would say there weren’t any votes in it. Or perhaps ministers were savvy enough to realise pulling down such a grand building, and either reinstating it or building a new one, was too complex and financially risky to touch.
Another city power broker, The Press newspaper, is calling on the city’s leaders to get on with redeveloping the square. (That seems a similar message to those lobbying the Anglican Synod in 2017.)
Sitting alongside its front-page story, editor Kamala Hayman said, in a rare opinion piece, it was “fanciful” to claim the reinstatement work was merely being paused.
Christchurch must plan for a future without a restored cathedral at its heart, she wrote – suggesting the square could host a daily market, for parts of it to be grassed, or even have a fountain built to improve its aesthetics.
“Our building sits right beside it so we see – all day, every day – what is going on, and it’s just enormously frustrating,” Hayman tells Newsroom. “We’ve got to get the best minds together to figure out what we’re going to do, and not just wring our hands.”
Without strong leadership, there’s a risk the city centre could be abandoned, she says.
“It will stall an awful lot of redevelopment of the square if the political leaders don’t do something about it.”
Mayor Phil Mauger posted on social media last week “pausing the reinstatement” was sad news, and Christ Church Cathedral Reinstatement had asked the city council to hold $7m until the building’s future was “clearer”. “If in the future there is a way forward for the project to proceed then the funds can be released.”
Realistically, however, if a white knight was going to come forward and save the cathedral, wouldn’t they have emerged by now? For years, Christchurch people have heard the same rhetoric about international donors lining up to chip in. Well, where are they? Once again, it’s taxpayers and ratepayers being asked to foot the bill.
Hayman, the newspaper editor, thinks the time for waiting is over. “What donors are going to come to the party when they’ve shut up shop?”
Stewart, the reinstatement company’s chair, admits $50m can be added to the projected cost for every decade the cathedral sits idle.
“We’ve got to do something that isn’t dependent on what happens to the Anglican cathedral,” Hayman says. “We’ve got to make things work without it because I think it’s going to be a long time before that’s sorted.”
While the cathedral debate was raging soon after the 2011 quake, Press readers were split on whether to reinstate the building, Hayman recalls. “There was a really strong emotional tie to that cathedral.”
This year, however, she says it’s only the hard-core Anglican supporters who stand behind the rebuild – and want tens of millions of public dollars poured into the project.
“Most people have moved on.”
That’s a powerless place for the Anglican Church to sit.
“I actually do feel really sorry for them. I think they were cornered,” Hayman says. “They felt they were going to be locked in court action for many, many years.
“At the time they felt, and it seemed like a good idea, that it would be quicker just to reinstate it. But as we’ve learned that probably wasn’t the case. But we could potentially still have been locked in legal action now.”
All of this is not to say the situation is irretrievable. The post-quake development along the Avon River bubbled along slowly and then arrived in a rush; the same could happen with Cathedral Square.
The Anglican Church is a private institution that is entitled to make decisions about its land. What complicates matters, however, is the land was originally gifted to the church for the construction of a cathedral, and what happens on the site is controlled by legislation. (That includes the Christ Church Cathedral Reinstatement Act 2017, and an order in council adopted in 2020.)
Also, if the church relies on public money – it has already received almost $30m – then the public should be entitled to a view about what is built there.
To my mind, the longer the Anglican Church clings to its reinstatement dream, the longer it will take for a new building to be completed on that site. It is now up to the church to articulate a vision the public can embrace and potentially fund.
Uncertainty is not new for the cathedral site.
The land was set aside in 1858 but foundations were only laid in 1864. The nave and tower were were completed in 1881, and the cathedral was consecrated. But the building wasn’t completed until 1904. (It suffered earthquake damage in 1881, 1888, and 1901 – with the 1888 quake bringing down the top nine metres of the spire.)
Uncertainty about the cathedral today will be received differently, however. Many people are likely to see the broken building as a raw reminder of one of the city’s worst events. Some will no doubt want to avoid the square altogether.
As a Catholic, Tā Mark Solomon, a former kaiwhakahaere of Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, had more of an attachment to the now-demolished Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, on Barbadoes St.
He says the Anglican cathedral was a beautiful building, and an “icon of Christchurch”, but he supports the government’s decision not to pour taxpayer money into it. The damage is far worse than originally thought, he notes. The church should “make something of the shell”.
What should be the priority for the council and the government?
“At the moment we’ve got this little thing called global warming. I think one of the major areas they need to be concentrating on is the infrastructure … our infrastructure is nowhere near [in a state] to be able to deal with this.”
The cathedral’s west porch sits about 6.2m above mean sea level.