Cathedral may be mothballed
The cost to restore Christ Church Cathedral has skyrocketed to $248 million and unless $30m can be found by August, the building will be mothballed indefinitely.
There is now a $114m funding gap and ratepayers and taxpayers are being asked to foot the bill.
The charitable company managing the rebuild, Christ Church Cathedral Reinstatement Ltd (CCRL) admitted it was not the news it wanted to announce, but chairperson Mark Stewart said there was “no sugar-coating” the situation.
“Ultimately, we are going to run out of money unless we solicit some support. What we need is a lifeline.”
The project finish date has also been pushed out by four years, from 2027 to 2031 – two decades after the cathedral was damaged in the February 2011 earthquake and 11 years after work began.
In March last year, it was estimated to cost $160m to restore the cathedral, up from an earlier budget of $154m. However, in 2016 a government working group estimated the restoration would cost about $103m.
Those budgets were based on assumptions that were found to be wrong once access was gained inside the building in March last year, Stewart said.
The latest $88m budget increase was due to several issues. The foundations were not as deep as drawings completed in 1881 had led them to believe. There was also a lot more water under the tower than previous tests had concluded, and the masonry work was expected to cost more and take much longer than original estimates.
The heritage walls were also much stronger than originally thought, so it had taken longer to deconstruct and strengthen them, adding to the cost.
The time and cost allowances for strengthening, foundations, masonry work and dewatering were substantially under allowed for, CCRL said.
The budget blowout has led CCRL to make some tweaks to the design in a bid to save costs. It is scraping a basement under the tower to reduce the depth of its foundation.
It has also removed the lower courtyard, which will be reconfigured along with the museum and retail into a simpler singlestorey visitor centre, north of the main cathedral.
The centre was still going ahead because it was deemed a necessary part of the project and not having it would create “operational challenges” for the main cathedral, CCRL said.
The project has $134m in current and planned funding in place, including $25m from central government, $10m from the Christchurch City Council, $24m from donations, and $33m from insurance proceeds. The original insurance proceeds from the cathedral were $44m, but it was agreed to keep some of that money for future maintenance and insurance.
CCRL has committed to raising another $26m through philanthropic donations and the Anglican Church is contributing $16m, but even with these payments the project is still $114m short. Parishioners were asked in February to contribute $2.5m to the project and had so far donated about half that.
Anglican Bishop Peter Carrell would not say exactly where the church would find its $16m contribution, because details would need to be decided by its governing body, the synod.
However, if it sold the Transitional Cathedral on Latimer Square it was possible that money would be put toward the cathedral. The church had already contributed $3.8m from the sale of the St Luke’s site to the project.
Carrell said he was committed to returning to the cathedral in the Square, despite the cost increase.
When asked if it was time to give up on the cathedral’s restoration and demolish the building, Stewart said the category 1 historic building legally had to be reinstated.
The reinstatement debate happened a decade ago and that was not what this debate was about, he said.
“There is no question, it’s being reinstated, we just don’t have the money.”
Mothballing the project was a very real possibility, but it was not one CCRL wanted to pursue, he said.
The $30m injection would allow work to continue to the end of next year and see the strengthening work largely completed.
It would also buy the group time to find the additional money, Stewart said.
Mothballing would cost millions and see the building remain a fenced-off construction site in the centre of the city.
“How can we punctuate the end of the earthquake era without having the cathedral rebuilt?,” Stewart said. “It is the beating heart of Christchurch. It’s just not beating right now. Our job is to get it beating again but we need the money to do that.”
CCRL had already talked to Finance Minister Nicola Willis and had updated the city council.
Mayor Phil Mauger said in a statement that resolving the situation would take the combined efforts of CCRL, the church, the city and central government.
“Many of our residents, businesses and visitors will see the cathedral as the final piece of the rebuild. But we must acknowledge that the financial pressure all of these groups are under at the moment will make this challenging.”
Stewart recognised the timing was terrible. It has come at a time when the city council is consulting on a draft 10-year budget with a cumulative rates increase of 57.8%.
But, he said the cathedral was the city’s number one icon and was situated in the city’s living room.
The church, under former Bishop Victoria Matthews, originally decided to demolish the cathedral, but a legal campaign led by former politicians Philip Burdon, who personally contributed $5m to the reinstatement, and the late Jim Anderton, was mounted to prevent it.