Property developer considering taking on $20 million St Gerard's church restoration project
Friday, 21 May 2021
A Wellington property developer says the city’s earthquake-prone St Gerard’s Church should be converted into a public facility such as a university building, and he is considering taking on the job.
The fate of the 113-year-old church and adjoining monastery overlooking Wellington Harbour remains up in the air, with its owners saying there are “no immediate plans” for the building beyond its final mass on Sunday.
The Category 1 heritage-listed building in Mt Victoria was built in 1908.
But Maurice Clark, an officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit who is leading earthquake-strengthening work on the band rotunda in Oriental Bay, said he was eyeing up the restoration project.
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“I have been, and still am, looking at it,” Clark said.
“The most obvious commercial use is apartments, but I think the most suitable use for that building would be a public place such as a university building or library.”
Clark is proprietor and managing director of McKee Fehl Constructors, which took on one of Wellington's largest heritage strengthening projects in 2014 – the Old Public Trust Building on Lambton Quay.
He estimated upgrading the church and monastery would cost $20m, but described the church, an unreinforced masonry building, as a structural “nightmare”. The monastery is made from reinforced concrete.
The buildings are owned by the International Catholic Programme of Evangelisation (ICPE), which tried to raise $11 million to strengthen the building but announced its closure in April after it raised just $42,000 by July last year.
“I have a feeling of sadness, because I know how iconic the church is,” said ICPE Mission New Zealand director Silvana Abela, who has been with the group since 1985.
“On the other hand, because it does require earthquake-strengthening, I still believe it’s the right decision, because it’s people’s safety [at stake].”
The church and monastery were sold to the ICPE in 1988 by the Redemptorists, a religious congregation of the Catholic Church, following rising rates costs and declining priest numbers.
It’s understood that if the group sells the building before 2033, it will need to give half of the proceeds back to the Rome-based congregation.
The building has a combined rateable value of $10.3m, according to property records.
Abela did not want to comment on the terms of the agreement, with negotiations between the two parties ongoing.
She said the group had not decided what it would do with the building once it closed, but all options were on the table.
“We don’t have an immediate plan as such. We are still looking into things.
“We will still want to remain in Wellington as a Catholic community. How that will take place and in what shape, we don’t know yet.”
Abela said the building had been “a source of solace and comfort for many over the years”, and could be bought by another Catholic organisation.
“I believe that something good could come out of it … it depends on what God has in store.”
St Gerard’s Church was built for Redemptorist priests in 1908, with the three-storey monastery added in 1932.
It was designed by Wellington architect Frederick de Jersey Clere, and named after St Gerard Magella, the patron saint of pregnant women.
It was used for monastic purposes for many years, before becoming a parish church in the 1960s.
The building has an earthquake rating of between 20 and 34 per cent of the New Building Standard, making it earthquake-prone.
It needs to be strengthened by 2037, after the council granted a 10-year deadline extension in September last year.
City councillor Nicola Young, who has family ties to the church, said the building needed to be sold urgently.
“I just wish the owners would accept the reality of the situation, sell the building, and let someone go in and rescue it.
“The owners don’t seem to understand that they need to sell before the building collapses.”
Young suggested the building could be used for an events centre and hotel, or apartments.
“The days of a church and a monastery have gone.”