Building with lowest quake-safety rating was closed last year

ANorth Shore church with million-dollar views out to Rangitoto Island is going under the hammer. All Hallows Methodist Church in Campbells Bay has been closed since the end of last year after failing an engineer’s seismic report into earthquake safety.

After receiving the lowest safety rating, the board of the Methodist Church of New Zealand consulted the community and then decided to sell the building and land, which totals 2460sq m.

The property has a capital value of just over $2 million, according to the Auckland City Council/QV.

It sits on prime land, just 200m from Campbells Bay beach.

The Rev Keith Taylor, convener of the Methodist Auckland-Manukau synod’s property group, said it had a strict policy about buildings since the Christchurch earthquakes.

“The property is of no use to the Methodist church any more or the local parish and therefore it is on the open market. And there are no covenants on it to say that the church must stay.

“It’s not for us to determine what the people are going to do with it,” he said.

Barfoot & Thompson real estate agent and local resident Holly Strever said she was “pretty confident” the church building would remain.

It was rated category B under the Auckland District Plan so would be harder to knock down, she said.

“And I do think there would be a lot of community support for anyone to take it on . . . It’s pretty viable to do various things with it.”

Those with an interest in the building included other churches and people wanting to turn it into a home.

Tender applications for the church close on April 16.