How to rescue Cathedral Square
Regenerate Christchurch has big plans for Cathedral Square. And automatically that means big controversy. Will it become another grand dream watered down? John McCrone reports.
You have got to say that right now, Cathedral Square, the supposed heart of Christchurch city, is looking a shambles. A tatty disgrace. When did this clutter of food vans, with their scruffy garden furniture dining areas, take over the very centre of the square like some freedom camper invasion?
Bits of the old square are still recognisable within the current randomness.
John Robert Godley’s statue stands with its imperious stare, although he could do with a good wash. The lime trees are so lush this spring they are positively shaggy, bent down to head level.
But all around, weeds sprout out of cracks, odd bits of this and that have been left lying about.
The flock of plastic street art ‘‘traffic sheep’’ appears to have been disarranged by passing drunks. Maybe the same ones who placed the road cones atop the scaffolding poles.
The ‘‘ugly as’’ temporary toilet block has a giant graffiti tag scrawled across its back, while the official art – the muralled hurricane fencing meant to conceal the full horror of the derelict Christ Church Cathedral and Chief Post Office – is even ghastlier with its ‘‘vibrant’’ colours and styles.
Something is being built. The new Central Library juts forward like a vast black crate.
But mostly the square is surrounded by what historians of the period will describe as Wilson Parking bombsite minimalism. Pebbly stretches of cars and towaway signs.
Who is going to sort out this mess? And is it even fixable anymore?
People familiar with the history of Cathedral Sq will know just how much a source of public controversy it has always been.
It was once the middle of three parks that defined the city’s spine – Cranmer in the West, Latimer in the East, Ridley in the middle. Three Protestant martyrs all in a row.
Ridley was laid out in the shape of a Maltese cross. It became the main marketplace and the site of the cathedral. By the 1900s, it was the busy hub of Christchurch with its tram station, cinemas, shopping and dining. It may have had a golden age.
Then it morphed into a ring of banks and offices with their closed-off frontages. After 6pm, all the windows were dark, the workers gone home, leaving a place not to be walked alone.
The attempts to fix it became a civic joke. In 1961, a design competition suggested fountains outside the cathedral door and other delights never done.
In the 1970s, it was carpeted in brick red tiles. A big 1991 rethink switched to grey Chinese granite pavers that proved too slippery, too dazzling.
A list of other intended improvements, like playgrounds, tree promenades, outdoor theatres, never quite happened.
In 2001, another fix-it campaign. More exciting ideas mostly not followed through. The traffic configuration was squeezed, but still 2000 buses a day were taking its tight corners at unnerving speed.
In 2009, ahead of the earthquakes, famous Danish urban designer Jan Gehl was commissioned for yet another report.
To locals, the square had become more or less a tourist plaza. The office blocks were being turned into hotels. The square was a drop-off point for delivering dazed cruise ship customers to the waiting trinket shops.
Gehl did a pedestrian count and showed the square still mattered. It scored way above the Arts Centre, Cashel Mall, High St and Victoria Sq for foot traffic.
His revival plan involved establishing Colombo St as the new axis for the city. Council money would be spent to emphasise a connection between three core pedestrian destinations – the square, Cashel Mall, and a tobe-built south city bus exchange with its own public plaza.
That was the last rescue scheme. Then came the earthquakes and the square has become the dead zone of decay.
The south city is coming alive with its retail precinct, the promise of a Hoyts complex, a lot of fill-in building. The west of the city has become a swanky parade of office blocks, paid for by insurance receipts even if still short of a few tenants.
But the square is affecting the recovery of the whole north side of the central city now. It is a blight of uncertainty that spreads itself across an entire neighbourhood.
Is anybody going to grab it by the shabby scruff of its neck and finally sort it out?
Well that is meant to be happening. In July, after some hiccups and delays, Regenerate Christchurch – the joint crowncouncil agency with special earthquake recovery powers – finally launched a public consultation exercise.
Regenerate gave itself four months to talk to reference groups, stakeholders and property owners. Chief executive Ivan Iafeta says it has been meeting with groups of school children as well as greyhaired heritage campaigners. Even the Wizard has been consulted a few times.
By early next year, a set of recommendations should be crossing the desk of the Mayor and Regeneration Minister.
Depending on their reactions – the plan may be quite ‘‘aspirational’’, Iafeta admits – the outcome of this business-casing will likely be revealed to the public in early 2018, just in time for the council’s Long Term Plan budget discussions.
So it is a process under tight
‘‘We want to move away from it being a Victorian front parlour to being a modern Kiwi living room for the city.’’
Urban designer James Lunday
‘‘The idea of permanent buildings in the square is an absolute no-no for a start.’’
Heritage advocate Anna Crighton
wraps for now. But already the murmurings have started. Regenerate’s initial concept plans, the discussion documents meant to get the ball rolling, have startled many.
Despite Iafeta’s claims that 83 per cent of those consulted either have supported them, or only expressed ‘‘some concerns’’, Cathedral Square looks headed towards the usual violent clash of opinions.
It is bound to get controversial. And bound to get expensive too.
The fact that the council and Crown between them have earmarked $9 million for the square’s re-vamp has caused a few hollow laughs.
‘‘You only need to look at the Margaret Mahy playground and the $40m to build that – $9m won’t go anywhere,’’ says heritage campaigner Dr Anna Crighton, who as a former city councillor has sat through a number of the square’s previous fix-it campaigns.
To winkle some sense of where the consultation is actually headed, I arrange to meet James Lunday, the urban designer taken on as Regenerate’s planning manager.
As it turns out, Cathedral Sq is unfinished business for Lunday. He and celebrated architect Ian Athfield were employed to do the 2001 re-design. ‘‘I think I’ve still got Ath up there looking over me,’’ Lunday says.
A transplanted Glaswegian, Lunday knows the square intimately having lived for a few years in an apartment overlooking it – above the old Regent Cinema, owned by the Carter family, one of the car park bombsites now.
Lunday agrees the big question Regenerate has to answer is what is the real function of the square in the new Christchurch?
It had a clear purpose back when it was the city’s transport hub and natural meeting place. The fear is that post-quake, it will become just the Convention Centre and a ring of upmarket hotels – a place for visitors rather than locals.
However Lunday says that is too pessimistic. Two big recovery decisions will make the square a people’s place.
First, there is the re-located Central Library. Double the size and with a roof-top garden, it is going to be a huge attraction for locals, he says.
Then next to that is the blocksized Performing Arts precinct.
‘‘We’re going to end up with possibly five theatres operating in there. And along with that will come a whole lot of other community arts and activities.
‘‘The cinemas and theatres used to be in the square area, en masse. And so we’re in fact going to bring back the night-time economy there.’’
Lunday says think about the Cathedral’s potential too. It is a huge relief the Cathedral will be restored, of course. But also, it will return not just as a heritage monument. The Anglican Church wants to emphasise its connection with community activity.
And even the Convention Centre will be hosting local events and exhibitions. All this will give the square the strong civic focus it had been missing.
Then the offices that return with have a quite different character. They won’t be closed-off corporate fortresses but will have ground floors of shops and cafes that spill out into the square.
For example, Spark – which used to be in the Telecom building behind the square – is taking the four-storey office block now going up on the old BNZ site.
This will bring in 450 workers. Yet it will also have a public streetlevel, arcade and some kind of roof-top garden.
Spark is also making itself part of the life of the square by investing in a ‘‘Spark Lab’’ in the library’s new ground floor Knowledge Centre just across the way.
Other planned office blocks, like the rebuilt Grant Thornton building, will have the same ‘‘activated frontages’’.
The old square was repressed. Everyone neatly boxed off, says Lunday. ‘‘We want to move away from it being a Victorian front parlour to being a modern Kiwi living room for the city.’’
The problem is getting some momentum going. Lunday says Regenerate has been talking to 70 property owners in the square and its surrounds to get an idea of what further developments might be planned.
Next to Spark, there is enough happening. One damaged hotel is being repaired. Another is to go on a cleared site. Tucked in the same corner, is planned a twin tower apartment development – 14 floors with penthouses priced at $4m.
‘‘But we’ve drawn up an intentions map of what land owners may be doing, and there’s a lot of red in there for ‘no intentions’,’’ says Lunday.
That is a worry. And why an ambitious regeneration plan is necessary. Lunday says developers need a definite vision of what the identity of the rebuilt square will be so they can imagine what might fit around it.
Turning to his bold redesign suggestions, Lunday confesses that many of his ideas are similar to the ones not adopted in 2001. But then the logic of them remains the same.
The square’s problem is that it is such a wide open space. Yet it has also been broken up to disguise its natural slopes. ‘‘It was done as one large landscape. But it was split into these levels and steps.’’
Then various civic items became dotted about without much real coherence. ‘‘A lot of ‘objects’ have been allowed to pop up all over the place over the years.’’
Lunday wants to do two things. Both increase the usable space of the square by taking out the through roads and pushing back its margins, then make sense of the space by dividing it into a set of definite ‘‘rooms’’.
The first such room is Cathedral Gardens. Lunday says the fences isolating the Cathedral could be taken down and that whole half of the square made a proper park. The Cathedral would sit as an island in a field of greenery.
He dreams also of water in the square – a stream or water feature that wraps its way from right around behind the Cathedral, across the square and headed off down Worcester Blvd, even perhaps connecting to the Avon.
A second room would be Post Office Plaza, a properly levelled and cleared rectangle in front of the Cathedral.
It would be hard paving for crowds of 10,000 plus. An events space modelled on Melbourne’s Federation Sq to host New Year parties, demos and rallies, free concerts and fan zones.
On the south side Colombo St entrance near the Chalice, Lunday suggests making that a more permanent market place spanned by a glass-roofed pavilion.
Then filling the northwest corner, where the taxi rank and tram stop currently stand, his most controversial idea is to take that space for a small set of public buildings.
Lunday says like Federation Sq, the finishing touch is to have some quality indoor, general-purpose, event areas.
These would house the art exhibitions and other cultural activities, as well being where the public toilets, tourist centres, police kiosk, and other facilities could be collected together.
Lunday is thinking of several buildings around their own small courtyard, possibly as much as three storeys high.
It would give places for people to come to do things regardless of the weather or time of day, meaning the square always has something going on.
So four spaces. Cathedral Garden, Post Office plaza, a covered market corner, and the square’s own little activities precinct.
Then because Regenerate’s intention is to get rid of the through traffic, making the roads into the square service access only, it will feel both larger and more connected.
Colombo St will be restored as the road that goes straight across the square, past the Cathedral’s door step, like it used to.
But without the cars and buses doing laps of the perimeter, there will be a very different atmosphere. People and the life of the square will come first, Lunday says.
Not the cheapskate option
Regenerate’s Iafeta is quick with the caveats. Lunday’s ideas are a set of proposals for people to respond to. The whole thing is a long-term vision, not a plan which will be built in 12 months.
It could take a decade of more for all the elements to appear. The idea is to have a strategic direction that will deliver a great city centre over time.
As to the costs, Iafeta says Regenerate is only dealing in high level estimates.
He nods agreement that the $9m allocated will hardly cover basic landscaping. But he says projects like the library all have their own forecourt budgets.
The infrastructure under the square and connecting roads needs repairing and that is another expense built into council plans. Further money exists in various pools.
The proposed northwest quadrant of buildings sounds like one of those $100m plus projects. However Iafeta says Regenerate’s instruction was to start with a vision rather than a budget. As still the principle civic space, the square has to have a top quality plan because cities are judged on their centres.
Neither council nor government are looking for the cheapskate option, he says. If they were, the square might as well be tarmacked.
Yet already the howls of protest can be heard. Lunday is unapologetic that he is arguing for a square with its eyes on the future, not the past. It will look totally different.
But heritage stalwarts like Crighton are aghast at this clean slate approach. ‘‘The idea of permanent buildings in the square is an absolute no-no for a start,’’ she exclaims.
Crighton was invited to one consultation meeting and was shocked to get the feeling Regenerate didn’t even know the cross layout of the square has heritage protection status.
So adding council properties and changing the look would be ‘‘legally impossible’’, she says – except Regenerate has those special powers.
Crighton worries the First Four Ships commemoration area outside the Chief Post Office seems missing in Lunday’s design. And the thought of a Cathedral Gardens feels a nonsense.
‘‘You’ve got three hotels in that corner which will have to be serviced by buses, taxis and cars. Victoria Sq is our green, passive, park space. Cathedral Sq is meant to be hard-edged and urban.’’
David Sheppard of architect Sheppard and Rout, whose firm has designed both the Spark building and proposed Cathedral Towers apartment complex, is milder but still dubious.
He says when rate-payers actually have to vote with their pockets, they may agree the layout of the old square was not that bad. It is getting it back into action that matters.
Even as a hotel plaza, the square would be lively with guests. The lights would be on all evening.
New buildings in the square would be a huge cost and block traditional sightlines. The council just needs to spend money on creating a buzz of activity through a year-round ‘‘cavalcade of events’’, Sheppard says.
‘‘Yes, the square is big. But it can be used in a number of ways. They use to fill it up with fire engines and ambulances. They had mini-helicopter shows, New Year fireworks. Those are the sorts of things you can do there.’’
And Sheppard is worried that Regenerate’s consultation exercise seems to be taking place behind closed doors. ‘‘As usual, the excuse is everyone’s sworn to commercial confidentiality.’’
Is it going to seem like a done deal when eventually the plan is made public?
Time for big moves
The council and government will of course have a view. Public reaction has watered down almost every other attempt to make big changes in the square in the past.
And again, the argument will be that it is just a strategy – something endlessly modifiable as decisions need to be made over the next 10 to 30 years.
But also, the damage done to that part of the central city by the earthquakes looks to demand a radical long-term view.
Regenerate will be highlighting the fact that it made a special effort to consult the city’s youth. Its report on that states: ‘‘In total we engaged with around 211 12-to-24 year olds, with a specific focus on schools in the immediate area.’’
And in particular, the city’s future rate-payers gave the thumbs up to a Cathedral Gardens and sheltered public meeting areas, Regenerate says.
So rather than backing off, Iafeta and Lunday seem convinced this is finally time for big moves. That is the case they will be bringing.
Lunday reveals the regeneration plan will be in fact much wider in scope than just the design of Cathedral Sq itself. His brief takes in the whole six blocks within the ‘‘inner city ring road’’ formed by Kilmore, Durham, Hereford and Manchester St.
As well as looking inwards on the square to give it an organisation in terms of a set of rooms, he is also thinking about the hub and spoke connections the square, which as the city’s proper centre, needs to make back to the city directly around it.
Lunday says one such exciting idea is to turn New Regent St into a major pedestrian route linking the north and south of the city.
He says it is no secret that the glass shopping arcade of Cathedral Junction is struggling as it has become geographically isolated during the rebuild.
But it could become an extension to New Regent St and then continue on as an attractive back alley passage all the way down to the retail precinct.
In the other direction, New Regent St could continue on down to the river and – with a new pedestrian bridge – link with the north bank and Kilmore St.
‘‘So that goes right over to that emerging private health district there, with lots of workers. We see this a pedestrian highway connecting from the river right down to Cashel St and the retail precinct.’’
Another idea – one that Crighton is floating – is that Worcester Blvd could be reconnected to Latimer Sq by taking away the clutter and fencing around the back of the Cathedral, creating a more natural flow for pedestrians.
Lunday replies excellent. It would honour the original three park layout. And again it would help the square feel like the centre where all roads converge. There would be no doubting where it stands in the city’s hierarchy of public spaces.
So at the moment Cathedral Sq is a sad disgrace, pulling a whole side of the city down. And history shows any regeneration plan is going to be controversial almost no matter what.
Yet it is time for someone has to grab the square by the scruff, finally get it properly sorted out.