South frame still three sites short
Progress is slow on the central city’s frames. Rebuild reporter Liz McDonald and photographer Alden Williams survey the structural bones around which vibrant life is expected to grow.
Seven years since the 2011 earthquake, three sites are still needed to complete Christchurch’s long-awaited south frame.
In the meantime, the anchor project barely resembles the blueprint’s vision for the area.
Derelict sites, twisted wire fences and graffitied walls sit alongside finished lanes with their attractive buffed pavers, public artworks and new plantings.
Vehicle dealers wash cars. Discarded road cones lie on public seating and planters.
The south frame, which was conceived in the 2012 blueprint, was intended to be a park-like setting for commercial buildings, forming the fourth piece of a green border with the Avon River and the east frame.
The project aims to bring the public into the new lanes and small squares between Tuam and St Asaph streets.
Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) is tasked with completing the necessary purchases.
Some of the landowners are understood to be playing hardball with the Crown, which has so far appeared reluctant to use its powers of compulsory acquisition.
Yesterday, LINZ Canterbury recovery group manager Jeremy Barr said there were three partial aquisitions still to be finalised. Those sites cover just 325 square metres out of a total of about 2.9 hectares needed for the frame. The three properties are in the innovation and health precincts.
Negotiations with the owners were ‘‘at an advanced stage’’, Barr said.
‘‘LINZ has made significant progress in finalising the remaining acquisitions required to complete the south frame.’’
As of last year, the Crown had spent $32 million buying south frame land. Building the public spaces inside it has been budgeted at another $20m.
About 99 per cent of the land needed for the project is in public hands. One block is finished.
When completed by Crownowned company O¯ ta¯karo, the south frame’s cycle and pedestrian route along the central Greenway will link the health and innovation precincts.
Left over from the Crown buyup of land are untidy spare sites where buildings have been demolished.
There is promise in the form of the new Ao Tawhiti Unlimited Discovery going up between St Asaph and Mollett streets, and the planned conversion by developers of an old printer’s building into a hospitality and retail hub.
Other private developers have shown interest in sites along the Greenway, of which several are being sold by the Crown for compatible building projects.
They are meant to help frame a central city which sprawled too far before the earthquakes. Christchurch’s east and south frames, along with the Avon River, create a rectangular frame for the central business area.
They are a key aspect of the city’s rebuild blueprint.
One residential and one commercial, they are also intended to help open up and revitalise what could have been dead space – the rear of private properties inside large city blocks.
But their development, ratepayer-funded and driven by Crown company O¯ ta¯karo, has been slow.
The first homes in the east frame, now renamed One Central, are under construction by Fletcher Living for late 2018 completion.
But it will be many years before the promised 900-plus apartments and terraced houses for 2000 residents are finished.
Central city businesses needing both a day and night population to survive want to see those homes built and filled.
Ironically, the slowness of the rest of the rebuild is partly the reason for the slow home building, as many apartment buyers are waiting for attractive amenities nearby.
But until the homes are finished, the east frame’s public space, the 2 hectare Rauora Park, stands ready.
Built for $30 million excluding land cost, it has 9000sq m of grass, 300 trees and 14,000 other plants.
Intended as the residents’ backyard, a thoroughfare, and a public relaxation space, Rauora Park is yet to be filled by all the human activity it has been designed for.
Opening day and outdoor movie nights have provided promising glimpses of what this space could be.
The commercially focused south frame also has a public spine running through it, known as the Greenway.
Not yet completed, it is being built in stages, starting with the centre blocks.
Its cost is $20m excluding land purchases, which to date have totalled around $30m.
The early idea was for a parklike strip with buildings facing the streets and a public route for pedestrians and cyclists through the middle, linking the health and innovation precincts.
Private land was to be bought up, and sold for sympathetic development as the east frame land has been.
However the cost of so much land led to a revised plan needing only 2.9 hectares.
The revised plan keeps the eastwest pathway idea, with northsouth laneways linking the Greenway to the streets and small public squares.
Most commercial properties except those needed for lanes or seen as incompatible with the concept, such as car yards, have been left alone.
The Crown buy-up has been slow, and it is still finalising negotiations with owners of the last three sites it needs.
Some public sites have been used for development of public buildings, including the Environment Canterbury offices, and Ao Tawhiti Unlimited Discovery School.
Car dealers the Cockram family are also selling their large holding of half a block, probably to developers.
Bringing the public into the area will provide customers for cafes and shops to establish themselves, encouraging more people in.
Development company Box 112, who have already stamped their mark on Welles St, are converting an old south frame printing building into shops, hospitality spots and offices.
Alongside, the public spaces have been made attractive, with designs and poetry etched into pavers, places to sit and relax or eat, and large-scale planting of native and exotic plants.
Creative sounding names include Sugarloaf Lane, Mauri Ora Lane, Nurseryman Lane and Memory Lane, Kahikatea Common, Mataı¯ Common and Evolution Square.
Like Rauora Park in the east frame, the Greenway and its lanes and small squares are the bones on which vibrant spaces could grow, as the new city builds.