Street lights and a mural worth $200k bring colour to inner city lane

Monday, 13 July 2026

The new multicoloured lights illuminate Press Lane that runs from Cathedral Square to Gloucester Street in central Christchurch.

A dark alley in the central city has been brightened with almost $200,000 worth of street lighting and a mural.

The lights were installed recently on about 50 metres of Press Lane between Gloucester and Worcester streets, where The Press building stood before the earthquakes. The lane now links the Performing Arts Precinct to Cathedral Square.

The lane and a neighbouring ‘pocket park’ had no Christchurch City Council-owned lighting and contained dark spots, “making it feel uninviting after dark”, staff told councillors.

Kevin Cawley of Total Lighting designed the lights, having previously done lighting displays for the Isaac Theatre Royal and the Old Government Building.

Officials recommended bespoke lights designed by Christchurch’s Kevin Cawley.

Cawley, from Total Lighting Ltd, did the lighting displays for the Isaac Theatre Royal and the Old Government Building at either end of the lane, among other city projects.

The big globes atop the new poles were inspired by similar globes on the theatre frontage. The gold colour of the poles were decided on due to gold decorations also on the theatre, he said.

Because the lights are LEDs, they can display an infinite number of colours. They are currently programmed with eight configurations, including a swirling pattern that Cawley is proud of.

Ellie Compton is inspired by her former career as an architecture, slicing buildings in half to expose “all the things you never see” inside.

New patterns can be created any time, including for special events, he said.

Meanwhile, Christchurch architect-turned artist, Ellie Compton, is receiving $12,000 to complete a mural on two sides of a small Orion electricity building on the lane.

Each Press Lane letter has been rendered in 3-D, as if each is a building, and inside the letters, celebrations, performances and night-life are under way - a nod to the Performing Arts Precinct.

Paying homage to The Press, a printing press, people reading newspapers and reporters in the office also feature.

The city needed nice-to-haves like this, said Heathcote councillor Nathaniel Herz Jardine after recently visiting Press Lane with the lights shinning.

Christchurch is “still filled with big, vacant sites”, he said.

“Instead of the dingy little alley I'm used to, the big coloured lights beckoned me toward Gloucester St creating a little bridge of festivity through the dead space.”

The staff proposal approved by councillors in January called for seven lights, but enough savings were found to install an eighth light and the mural, said council’s head of planning and consents, Mark Stevenson.

Each light and pole cost about $8000. Other costs include trenching and electrical work.

The mayor and all councillors except Yani Johanson voted for the project.