Gale force winds of change in Hornby
The most dramatic changes in Hornby’s relatively quiet history are coming as Christchurch turns to its unscathed suburbs for anewbeginning. CHRISTOPHERMOORE reports.
Hornby has never suffered a fashionable midlife identity crisis. It has always recognised what it is – a no-frills, no nonsense, closeknit working community, neither the largest, the most chic or most beautiful of suburbs but nonetheless home and workplace for 8000 Cantabrians.
For decades Hornby has been overlooked or simply dismissed as a place you wouldn’t choose to live in. But there are now increasing signs Hornby is perched on the cusp of change that could radically change its character. Cinderella might finally be coming to the ball as an earthquake-battered Christchurch looks towards its relatively undamaged southwestern suburbs and outlying communities as potential sites for the biggest redevelopment in its history.
Hornby wears its identity comfortably like a rumpled dressing gown.
Turn off the main highway and the community reveals itself in the long low-slung streets of unpretentious homes, neighbourhood dairies and community churches.
This is a community accustomed to being dismissed as Christchurch’s drab relation but, as they remind you, Hornby can claim fame as the childhood home of singers Anika Moa, Boh, Pearl and Bic Runga. In 1974 it became home to the Commonwealth Games velodrome.
But the planners, developers and commercial interests have plans for Hornby.
Established at the junction of two busy state highways, strung along the railway line that fuelled its growth and edged by a long utilitarian strip of industry, Hornby is no stranger to change. But if change has been creeping stealthily across the plain, it’s now jogging alongside the increasing number of new residents. It’s a tangible presence in the concentrated flow of traffic along the main highway and in the sweep of new subdivisions created from what were in living memory farm paddocks, market gardens and rural roads. Most of all, it’s reflected in the appetite for development that can be seen in the burgeoning plans for commercial expansion.
But old loyalties still flow along Hornby’s broad streets, in Hornby High School (established in 1975) around the tables at the local working men’s club and in the rugby league team. These are the second, third, even fourth generations of Hornbyites who have worked, played and often gone to school with each other. They are the people whom change will affect directly for better or worse – and there are already indications that this is happening. As rents rise in what has been a lower-income suburb, people leave for areas where rents are lower. Often they will be replaced by young professionals or semiprofessionals with children seeking a refuge from the earthquake-battered city.
It’s not only the human face which is changing. Hornby’s symbol, the idiosyncratic Pop Art Hornby clock tower building, is now threatened with demolition, victim of earthquake damage. Across the road the Hornby Hub Mall, a solidly reliable commercial beacon, is poised to undergo a radical makeover. Further down the street past the traffic-cluttered intersection of two major highways, Dress Smart looms above the traffic. The district, once a rich source of food for iwi, became a dress circle for Victorian Christchurch. Wealthy businessmen and farmers built grand country homes and supplied the city with meat and produce.
The small settlement (named, depending on your source, after an English town or a visiting British admiral) possessed a post office by 1870 and a fledgling business centre by 1900. The freezing works were established in 1896 (alongside amajor chicken farm) while the direct road and rail routes encouraged industry to expand during the 1920s.
This was always a company town providing a labour pool for the freezing and fertiliser works and the smaller industries surrounding it.
The end of World War II saw the establishment of major state housing areas in Hornby. By 1953, with a population of 2500, it was classed as a country town in the Paparua district and the focus for large-scale industrial expansion as planners chose to moved industry away from the city’s commercial centre and main residential areas.
Throughout this period, the Ministry of Works steered Christchurch’s major suburban expansion – it was only in the 1960s that private developers started to play an important role in the city’s residential expansion. Between 1996 and 2006, the resident population of southwest Christchurch grew by 13.6 per cent as increasing amounts of former
Coming down, above: rural land was designated residential.
The economic restructuring in the late 1980s saw the Crown Crystal glassworks and other smaller industries disappear. Hornby bunkered down.
Compared with the rest of Christchurch, the population of southwest Christchurch has always been less ethnically diverse, has a higher proportion of children and a lower proportion of older residents.
According to the Christchurch City Council’s 2009 southwest Christchurch area plan, the future demographic profile of the southwest has implications for the provision of local services and infrastructure. Planning needs to address issues associated with increasing population diversity and an ageing population. But the planners were not to know that what would happen on February 22, 2011, would largely dictate the area’s future.
Relatively unscathed by the earthquakes, Hornby and the surrounding region soon became a safe haven. While rents and land values are rising businesses like the Hornby Mall report sharp rises in customer numbers – the mall recording a 30 per cent increase in foot counts after February 22.
There are predictions that the community should now face a new future as a major service centre for a wide sweep of southwest Christchurch, serving rapidly growing places like Templeton, Prebbleton and Tai Tapu with their proliferation of lifestyle blocks and subdivisions.
The highways will be upgraded to include a proposed 80kmh, fourlane bypass between Hornby and Belfast.
Companies are arriving, like the Auckland-based DNZ Property Fund, which has leased a 1.2 hectare Christchurch warehouse to tyre importer and distributor Value Tyres for 10 years. The giant warehouse, on a 3.1ha site in Columbia Ave, has been a distribution centre for supermarket owner Progressive Enterprises.
The Christchurch City Council has approved a $6.5 million social housing development in Hornby as it works to to address Christchurch’s accommodation crisis. A report recommends that the council build 35 one or twobedroom units, a residents’ lounge and a village green on land it owns between Main South Rd, Goulding Ave and Shands Rd. The development borders the council’s Hornby Courts social housing complex.
The $6.5m cost of the development would be funded through insurance.
Against this background, the manager of the Hornby Hub, Jason Marsden, admits that when he arrived in here a decade ago he carried the usual preconceptions of the place in his pocket.
‘‘Hornby was still one of those places you drove straight through on your way south. It always looked a bit down-at-heel and sad. It was industry, the freezing works and Ravendown Fertiliser works.’’
But attitudes and perceptions can change.
‘‘I’ve discovered a strong solid community which today is growing at a rapid rate. This is a place with a strong sense of identity. It’s a place where people put their heads down and get on with the job. A community where everyone knows everyone else,’’ Marsden says.
Today he’s enthused by a $40m expansion and redevelopment project which, with 80 stores, will make The Hub Hornby Christchurch’s fourth-largest mall. The project was fuelled by strong indicators that $300m of retail spending would move from east to west as Christchurch repositioned itself in the aftermath of the earthquakes.
‘‘We want a chunk of that,’’ Marsden says.
Marsden sees Hornby emerging as a vital service centre for the Selwyn district.
‘‘There’s great stuff happening here – and it’s all positive.
‘‘Hornby has always been a ‘heads down and get on with it’ community. That’s its strength.