Editorial: New civic building represents confident Christchurch

OPINION: The official opening of the new civic offices today will remind Christchurch of what sustains it as a city and gives it drive and purpose, because the building expresses much about who we are and what we want to be as a community.

Buildings in Christchurch have fulfilled that role since the founding of Canterbury. Those first Gothic Revival structures were created to maintain the settlement's connection with a country from which sprang all the sustaining values of its new citizens. Over the following decades many buildings have reflected more than the ideas of their designers. That has certainly been the case with the buildings that have housed the Christchurch City Council.

It began its life in the Provincial Chambers and eventually found its own accommodation in the purpose-built red brick structure that is now Our City, opposite the statue of Captain Scott. In good Christchurch style, the building was controversial. It departed from the Gothic that had been almost the only style used for Christchurch's important buildings, which did not please the traditionalists. But its architect, Samuel Hurst Seager, had his roots in old Canterbury and new London and was innovative and clever. It was soon realised that he had designed for Christchurch a building that represented its growing confidence.

The move from that Oxford Terrace building was forced by the growth of the council, as it extended its administration over a burgeoning city. It prompted the two successive shifts of venue – from Manchester St to Tuam St and now to Worcester Bld.

In the process, civic chambers as an expression of a community's identity was lost. The shift to the former Millers department store building in Tuam St, rather than the development of a city headquarters on the site of what is now the Park Royal Hotel, was a mistake. It placed the council out of the city's mainstream and in a structure that said nothing about Christchurch's past or present.

The new council building reverses that loss of identity. Taking the landmark old post office, it is aspirational in design and clearly states that its a place of governance – governance that is not over-powering but attuned to the needs of people and the environment.

Unfortunately, this is far from the feeling of all citizens. The critics are vocal, deriving mostly from those who abhor council spending on anything but the fundamentals and are suspicious of its bureaucracy. Their charge is that the new building is unnecessary, opulent and imprudently funded.

The Millers building is 76 years old and nearing the end of its life in terms of housing a major administrative operation. It is also too small to hold the growing council staff – growing mainly because citizens expect more from local government and more functions have been imposed on it by Wellington. It is therefore sensible that the city council relocate to a building in which it can carry out its functions effectively on a centralised site.

It is also sensible that the staff be given pleasant working conditions. Their status as employees of the city should not consign them to the partitioned nooks and crannies that prevailed in Tuam St.

The critics seem to be on firmer ground in criticising the combination of Ngai Tahu and the council that results in the city renting the building. But that type of arrangement is common in commerce and government – renting frees the building's user from the burden of maintaining a depreciating asset. In addition, a mutually beneficial relationship between this country's first citizens and the city's seat of government should be applauded.

Christchurch should be proud of what has been achieved. A building of Stalinist brutality has be transformed into a structure that enhances one of the city's most important precincts. We now have a building that expresses our concern for environmental and aesthetic values. Local government has a headquarters that fits it to its vital tasks. This building represents a confident Christchurch.

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