Ferrymead Heritage Park has to be ‘more than just a men's shed’

Saturday, 11 May 2024

Changes have been made - and more need to come - at Ferrymead Heritage Park to deal with financial challenges.

The board at Ferrymead Heritage Park have resigned en masse and the park may raise gate prices and need further assistance to stave off a financial crisis.

As it is, the heritage park is staying afloat with a $400,000 grant made in June by the Christchurch City Council. The grant was split into three tranches that were each tied to significant reforms.

The council will vote on the last tranche - $148,300 - at its meeting on Wednesday.

Ferrymead Heritage Park is best known for its heritage trams and trains, but it must be more than a men’s shed, new executive director Jarrod Coburn says.

The park told council staff that if it didn’t get the second tranche in December, it could result in staff layoffs and the “imminent closure of [the park] for community access”. It got the money.

Four board members of the company that operates the park resigned together on March 11. A slate of new people have also been appointed to the trust board.

The park had previously asked the council for up to $1 million in annual funding in the council’s long-term plan. This was shot down by council staff, who recommended counsellors approve the $400,000 grant instead.

Period clothing featured at the park’s 50th anniversary in 2015, but new management wants Māori to be welcome too.

When that is spent, council staff indicated funding for the park could continue at “historical levels” - averaging about $145,000 since 2015. Annual park expenditure is about $750,000.

The park said the crisis was caused by reduced income from the council, loss of support from the Ministry of Education, and fewer visitors as a result of Covid. Visitor numbers recovered well this summer, it is said.

The park was founded in the mid-1960s and has always been run on a “marginal break-even basis”.

Landlines through the ages, in the Post and Telegraph collection at Ferrymead.

The park has a complicated structure. At the top is the Ferrymead Trust, which has overall planning and oversight roles at the facility, and owns or leases the 24-hectare site.

Beneath the trust sits the wholly owned Ferrymead Park Ltd, which operates the park day to day and employs 13 full and part-time staff.

The trust and the company serve visitors and the 15 non-profit societies that individually operate their heritage interests. The Tramway Historical Society, for example, operates historical trams and buses. The Canterbury Railway Society operates a variety of heritage locomotives, rolling stock and associated equipment and buildings.

The Fire Services Historical Society looks after the largest collection of working fire engines in the southern hemisphere.

The reforms that unlocked further tranches of council money are being driven by new executive director Jarrod Coburn, a businessman, JP and member of the Diesel Traction Group, a society keen on diesel-electric locomotives.

Coburn spoke to councillors on behalf of the trust on Tuesday. He declined to be interviewed for this article.

With Margaret Noble, he revamped the trust to focus on fundraising and strategic planning, increased engagement with the 15 societies and identified business opportunities such as bringing buses of cruise ship passengers to the heritage attraction.

Don McGlashan performs during the 2023 Nostalgia Festival at the park.

Work “continues” on creating volunteer opportunities for seniors, attracting social enterprises, beautifying the park and opening the facilities for locals and more events.

A decision on raising gate prices has not been made.

“The park has got to be more than just a theme park,” Coburn told councillors this week. “It's got to be more than just a men's shed.”

It needed to be a place where visitors could understand the story of Christchurch and “see parts of themselves”.

This included people who are currently “overlooked”, including perhaps people of Chinese origin and members of the LGBTQIA+ communities.

Mana whenua were being courted as well. “We’ve seen a genuine desire by the member societies and volunteers … to embrace and share Māori history on an equal footing with our post-colonial stories”, according to an internal park newsletter.

Meanwhile, the park faces long-term problems. Its 50 heritage and replica buildings were expensive to maintain and in various states of repair. Council staff want the park to address sea level rise at the low-lying site near the estuary. Many of the societies were reliant on dwindling numbers of volunteers and had modest cash reserves.

The long-term plan was to make the park a self-sustaining world-class visitor experience, but that was many years away.