Christ Church Cathedral mothballed after funding bid fails

Tuesday, 20 August 2024

Christ Church Cathedral is safe from the wrecking ball for now, despite the restoration of the stricken church stopping indefinitely.

The project was mothballed on Tuesday after it failed to plug an $85m funding gap. The Christ Church Cathedral Reinstatement Ltd (CCRL), the charitable company managing the rebuild, said that without government support it had no choice.

However, Bishop Peter Carrell insisted the cathedral would stay put: “I will never, as Bishop of Christchurch, seek a demolition order,” he said.

CCRL chairperson Mark Stewart said the group was not walking away from the project, nor had it given up on fundraising.

He said the Government’s decision not to contribute more money was “short-sighted” and did nothing to help the earthquake-damaged icon of Christchurch languishing in the centre of the city.

“By just kicking it down the road it’s actually making it worse and more expensive and harder to solve.”

Finance Minister Nicola Willis confirmed this month that the Government would not put in any more cash. The cathedral was a private, religious space, she said.

The repair bill is between $209m and $219m. CCRL’s shortfall was between $75m and $85m.

About $84m has already been spent on the project, including almost $30m of public money ‒ $25m from taxpayers and $3m from city ratepayers, plus other central and local government assistance.

Stewart said another $50m could be added to the cost for every decade the cathedral sat idle. It was too early to say how long work would be paused for, he said. That would depend on how quickly the money could be found.

Asked if it was a matter of waiting for a new, more sympathetic government to be elected, Stewart said that was one option, along with continuing to work with the existing one.

Work will start next week to “demobilise” the site. It will take three months and involve making the cathedral weather-tight.

Project director Keith Paterson said the scaffolding would be removed, but fences around the site would likely stay. The fences encroach into Cathedral Square, where CCRL leases 1472m² of land. That lease runs until 2030. The consent to restore the cathedral does not have an end date.

Exact costs to pause the project were not known, but they were about $5m initially and another $1m each year to maintain it, Stewart said.

Paterson said most of the ongoing cost was paying for the storage of 15,000 items. Some 5000 pallets of stone and 38 totara trusses from the cathedral are stored in warehouses across Christchurch.

CCRL had enough money in the bank to cover immediate costs, but the trio would not say exactly how much that was or how long it could afford to pay $1m a year in maintenance. At a council briefing in April, CCRL said it had $8m in the bank.

Depending on the length of the pause, CCRL could end up fundraising to cover the cost of storage, they said.

Carrell said the cathedral was originally built over 40 years and this was not the first time a lack of funding had halted construction.

The original foundations were laid in 1864 but worked stopped a year later due to a lack of money. Work restarted eight years later but the cathedral was not completed until 1904.

Carrell said he hoped it would not take that long this time.

He said there could not have been a worse time to seek financial support for the project.

“We know many New Zealanders are facing financial challenges at the moment and appreciate that Government has more immediate funding priorities.”

Fundraising continued, he said, and he remained committed to it.

“We will also continue the search for international donors.”

The council was due to give another $7m in ratepayer funding this month, but CCRL wants it to put the money aside for now.

The project is about a third complete. Half of the strengthening work has been done.