From Lancaster to Lyttelton

Thousands of truckloads of concrete from Lancaster Park’s demolished stands are destined for Christchurch’s port.

The park’s $12 million demolition began in stages earlier this year, and will ramp up early next year with the demolition of the two main stands.

Project director Lee Butcher said the Christchurch City Council expected to award the tender for the main demolition next month and work would begin in January before finishing at the end of 2019. The first truckloads of concrete would head to Lyttelton in February, he said.

About 4000 truckloads of material would be carried off the site during the year. However, Butcher said some material could remain on site to be used at the park, depending on what its future use would be.

Lyttelton Port chief executive Peter Davie said it had yet to be confirmed if the council was going to take demolition material to the port, but if it did happen it would be used to expand the reclamation area at Te Awaparahi Bay.

The material from Lancaster Park equated to about 0.4 of a hectare. The port had plans to increase the total reclaimed area to 34ha.

The council has yet to decide on the future use of the Lancaster Park site. A report would be going to the council either by Christmas or early next year.

However, the site was protected by the Lancaster Park Land Vesting Act 2008, which restricts the future use of the land to cricket, rugby union and all other sports, recreation, public assembly and ancillary purposes.

The land was held in trust for those activities in commemoration of the Canterbury soldiers who died in World War I.

Lee said it was decided the Lyttelton Port land reclaim project was likely the best solution to dispose of the concrete.

‘‘We looked at on selling the material as is from the site. We looked at the cost to crush and sell the materials at a suitable location. We also looked to see if any projects were on the horizon that could use the concrete.’’

Demolition work was now concentrating on removing the two large walkway ramps from both stands.

In October the roofs over the Paul Kelly and Deans stands were removed. The Tui stand at the southern end of the park was also completed and 28,850 tonnes of gravel beneath the stand was trucked to Christchurch City Council’s Nga¯ Puna Wai sports hub site.

Just two per cent of the 100,000 cubic metres of rubble from the stadium was expected to end up in landfill.

Butcher was doing everything he could to minimise waste from the stadium and everything from the seats to the toilet pans had been recycled.

Metal salvaged from the foundations stands’ roofs were being sold as scrap.

Polystyrene insulation above the corporate suites was also being recycled for a fraction of the $20,000 it would have cost to dump.