What was once the ‘heart of the city’ has since become symbolic of a long, slow rebuild, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in today’s extract from The Bulletin.

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Cathedral rebuild halted

Work to restore the Christ Church Cathedral has been put on ice indefinitely more than a decade after the devastating earthquake hit the garden city. The Press reported that attempts to fill an $85m funding gap necessary to complete the partially under way reconstruction had failed, effectively stopping any further work in its tracks. Those behind the planned rebuild are holding out hope, however, and a demolition isn’t on the cards at this point. The chairperson of Christ Church Cathedral Reinstatement Ltd, Mark Stewart, said: “Mothballing implies abandonment, we are not abandoning the project.”

Nevertheless, hopes of the iconic landmark returning to its former glory in the near future are rapidly slipping away. Kamala Hayman argues in The Press this morning that with the cathedral set to sit mothballed for years, Christchurch now needs to turn its attention to revitalising the neighbouring Square.

Ballooning costs to blame

You probably remember where you were in early 2011 when a 6.3 magnitude aftershock hit Christchurch, resulting in the deaths of 185 people. It’s a moment etched deeply into New Zealand’s history. It was the 2011 quake that most severely damaged the Christ Church Cathedral, crumbling the spire and leaving only parts of the lower building still standing. This 3News footage (shared by the BBC) from the time shows the extent of the damage in the days after the quake. In the years since, parts of the cathedral were demolished for safety reasons, but it wasn’t until 2017 that plans were put into motion to restore the cathedral. At the time, the costs were estimated to be $104m, which ballooned to $154m by 2020. By this year, as Newsroom’s David Williams reported, the projected cost had blown out to $248 million. There was a funding gap of $114m and $30m was urgently needed to continue the strengthening work that was already under way. The final blow came earlier this month: even after the shortfall had been cut to $85m, there was still a gap to be plugged and central government opted not to step in.

The question of heritage

Williams piece captures perfectly why the campaign to save the cathedral resonates with people, for better or worse. He wrote: “In 2012, and for many years beyond, the cathedral was a symbol of the quake’s destruction, and the city’s indecision.” As this Guardian report from 2021 illustrates, the cathedral was (and remains) the “heart of the city”. But what had once been a symbol of strength for the city became symbolic “of all that was wrong with the rebuilding”. In the year’s since the quake, as the city around the cathedral has been rebuilt, the cathedral has become a memorial to the disaster itself. So is there, asked Williams, still appetite to complete the costly rebuild?

As Max Reeves wrote for The Spinoff last week, the cathedral is emblematic of issues that commonly surround heritage protected buildings in Aotearoa. He argued that while heritage buildings are often preserved for historic or architectural reasons, that can also risk preventing change or necessary evolution. In the case of Christchurch, that has meant 13 years with little change to the cathedral while the rest of the city was rebuilt (including the new Cardboard Cathedral not too far away). We’ve seen far starker examples of this in other parts of the country, notably in Wellington where a “rusty oil tanker” was deemed worthy of protection. In the city centre, the Wellington Town Hall has sat empty for several years as costs for earthquake strengthening soared past $300m, as The Spinoff’s Joel MacManus looked at in this excellent feature last year. This Re:News report from earlier in the year provides a good overview of what constitutes a heritage building and why they can cause such consternation.

Protecting the future

In the wake of the quakes, former earthquake recovery minister Gerry Brownlee infamously labelled some buildings “old dungas” that needed to be removed. The current government has expressed some frustration around heritage buildings and how they can stall future development. In announcing his decision on the Wellington District Plan earlier this year, Joel MacManus reported, housing minister Chris Bishop said he wanted to work with councils to find a solution.

Another issue the government is already tackling is around the remediation of earthquake-prone buildings. It has a bill on the books currently that would extend the timeframe to repair buildings at risk of earthquake damage by four years. Public consultation on the lengthily-named “Building (Earthquake-prone Building Deadlines and Other Matters) Amendment Bill” closes in just a few days. It’s an interim measure while a wider review of the earthquake-prone building system initiated by the government is carried out. The minister responsible, Chris Penk, told RNZ’s Morning Report he expected it would ultimately make the rules for addressing earthquake-prone buildings “less onerous”, arguing that “high remediation costs and an excessive layering of regulations” had meant earthquake-prone buildings were not being restored.