Saturday, October 11, 2014

Beyond Quake Walls. 4-9 Years Post Sept 2010 Darfield Quake. CBD Update. CERA Boss, CCDU Boss Leave

Christchurch CBD focus. Saturday 11.10.14. It was 4 years since the 04.09.10 Darfield Quake & we'd survived all the aftershocks & rebuild disruptions during 2010-2013. In 2014 we'd moved to Lake Tekapo then Fairlie in Mackenzie Country about 200km SW of Christchurch. We'd returned regularly to Christchurch to relocate our possessions, visit Jake & Luke, still working & flatting in Christchurch & for Leah's lecturing & meetings at Seabrook Mackenzie Centre, London St.

As Leah had another meeting in Christchurch, I dropped her off at Black Betty Cafe, Manchester St. Black Betty Cafe was so successful at New Brighton, it had moved to the CBD, opp Ara tech. Before I rejoined Leah at Seabrook Mackenzie Centre, I trekked Christchurch's quake trashed & demolished CBD. Since I'd last trekked Christchurch CBD, mid December 2013, there was slow progress by CERA's CCDU, private rebuilds & Council activities, amidst dusty demolition sites, Wilsons carparks & few businesses trying to re-establish.

(Sept 2018. While Leah attended a 3 day teacher conference at rebuild, Rydges Hotel, Latimer Sq, I rechecked my treks described in this post, hence the parenthases. While trekking the CBD, I saw many rebuilds, new businesses & new cafes. There was a buzz, citizens enjoying their new CBD. Although still quake scarred, the CBD had a busy, positive vibe). 

Christchurch CBD notes:

St Asaph St: Still tatty: backs of part demolished / abandoned, High St bldgs were an eyesore. (Sept 2018. High St, brick facade was steel propped & behind, St Asaph St side, concrete, tilt slab offices were being built. The area would become known as Salt District).

Manchester St / St Asaph St / Tuam St: Both sides of Manchester St, were still demolition site messes. There were many ragged demolition sites by Poplar St, High St, Tuam St, Lichfield St, Madras St. Slow CCDU's green E Frame / Rauora Park. There were still part demolished & abandoned bldgs on High St, near Alice in Videoland.

Opp EPIC Innovation, Odeon Theatre roof was gone from Manchester St roadside. The unclaimed roof had lain there, an eyesore, for a couple of years. Half demolished Odeon Theatre was still an eyesore, theatre seats & part demolished auditorium were still exposed to the elements. (Sept 2018. Odeon Theatre facade was still propped by stacked shipping containers blocking Tuam St traffic. Ditto Sept 2019).

Tuam St: The old Council ghost, asbestos ridden, was demolished in 2014 for the Bus Interchange. The post quake, temporary bus exchange had worked for a couple of years further W along Tuam St, before making way for NZ National Govt's / CERA's Blueprint Justice Precinct.

Manchester St: E Frame, blocks between Lichfield St & Worcester St, several ghosts were demolished & sites were grassed for the E Frame / Rauora Park. Ghosts like Majestic Theatre; a Bedford Row ghost; Shooters ghost; neighbouring ghosts; all gone. That area of quake trashed Manchester St was tidied up, at last, enabling Rauora Park in the E Frame. (Sept 2018. I trekked grassy Rauora Park, a wind funnel, until planted trees formed shelter against southerlies).

Manchester St / Worcester St: Trinity Church / Octagon Restaurant ghost, an eyesore. Kitsch photo art of quake trashed Trinity Church, covered N & S ruined facades. (Sept 2018. FOR LEASE real estate board in front of Trinity Church. 2023. Due to poor funding, Trinity Church would still not be completely repaired).

June 2015. Shands Emporium would be relocated next to Trinity Church. Across the road, post quake rebuild, Westende House would be demolished, July 2015. CCDU wanted to widen Manchester St there to build a bus stop. (Sept 2018. Shingle carpark on Westende demolition site by Rauora Park. Manchester St vehicle lanes were not widened, only pavements were widened for pedestrians & bicycles. Slow traffic lights, new bus lanes, bus stops & 30 km/h speed limit ensured Manchester St congestion. Sept 2019. The bus lanes were dangerous. At one intersection, traffic had to wait for a traffic light to enable busses to turn left, cutting across waiting traffic. An accident waiting to happen!)

Cathedral Sq: Christ Church Cathedral ghost, an eyesore for 4 years, so far. Nothing going on, the Cathedral was still surrounded by boards & fencing. Arctic promo boards in front of the W facade showed various Arctic scenes & research by various countries. The Maori plant whare still stood by the fence-closed entrance to the Cathedral W facade. Asian tourists happy-snapped Cathedral ruins. (Sept 2018. No change to Christ Church Cathedral, nor cordon fence & whare, which would soon be removed. Dr Megan Woods, Labour MP, Regenerate Christchurch, would ensure that Christ Church Cathedral would be reinstated. 2019-20. No reinstatement. 2021. Reinstatement would begin).

Latest misinformation by The Press: Published aerial pics of E side of Christ Church Cathedral rather than the quake ruined W facade, tried bamboozling public that there was little quake damage to Christ Church Cathedral. If that was true, why board up & fence Christ Church Cathedral, stopping public access? (Sept 2018. Christ Church Cathedral still a mess. The most expensive pigeon loft in the world. Ditto 2020).

Cathedral Sq: Camelot Hotel ghost awaited 2015 demolition for Central Library / Turanga rebuild, which would open October 2018. Novotel open. Cathedral Junction open, trams running. Heritage Hotel open. Millennium Hotel / Distinction Hotel closed. (Distinction Hotel would open, Mar 2018. During the Covid-19 pandemic, 2020-21, Distinction Hotel would be a quarantine hotel).

Cathedral Sq: Government Life ghost was being demolished, filled with asbestos pollution. Never mind passersby. Gloucester St ghosts by Arcades ghost & Government Life ghost were also being demolished.

Gloucester St: Central Library ghost, half demolished for CCDU's Blueprint Convention Centre / Te Pae. Gloucester St Bridge, still closed for repairs. Anyone could see quakes had sunk the area into Avon River swampland. Yet CERA wanted to spend millions of dollars erecting a Convention Centre there, a monument to National's hubris. (Sept 2018. Convention Centre's massive steel framework had been erected slap bang by heritage bldg, Isaac House, Colombo St / Armagh St, a monstrous juxtaposition. 2018-21. Convention Centre / Te Pae, ongoing construction).

Colombo St / Hereford St: BNZ asbestos ghost, only part demolished, by closed Millennium Hotel / Distinction Hotel next door. Opp cnr, on ANZ demolition site, an office block rebuild progressed. (Sept 2018. BNZ had been demolished, at last. A new, 5 storey Spark bldg was being constructed, with massive steel frame, similar to the new Convention Centre / Te Pae steel frame, diag opp in Cathedral Sq. Hereford St was reduced to one lane traffic, due to an orange, plastic, road cone cordon for construction vehicle access).

Colombo St / Cashel Mall: BNZ Centre construction site by The Crossing: Pagoda Court ghost on The Crossing cnr. (Sept 2018. Still abandoned. Sept 2019. Demolished. Multi-storey being erected for Kathmandu). Opp, Ballantynes was humming. To enable BNZ Centre, Restart Cashel Mall, container shops, opp Ballantynes, were moved closer to Remembrance Arch by Oxford Tce. (Sept 2018. Restart Cashel Mall, container shops would be gone, replaced by Riverside Market shops, 2019).

Oxford Tce: Mad Cow ghost was demolished for the relocated container shops. Remembrance Arch was boarded for quake repairs. Remembrance Arch lions were gone for repairs. Saturday Flea market stalls & takeaway food carts lined Cashel Mall. Pre quakes, the stalls & carts used to be at the Arts Centre, Worcester Blvd. (Sept 2018. Remembrance Arch repairs had been completed).

Oxford Tce: The Terrace rebuild was stalled with steel skeleton incomplete, unpainted steel joint panels on painted girders were already rusting! 2015. The Terrace would resume rebuilding. (Sept 2018. The Terrace had been completed, lanes between bldgs, cafes & bars functioning).

Gloucester St / Durham St Nth: Provincial Council ghost, still closed for repairs. Opp, Amuri Courts demolition site, a crane was still on site while the Awly Building, office block rebuild progressed. Opp cnr, Cambridge Tce, Deloitte 5 storey office rebuild was almost complete, wavy glass walls & green glass panels. (Sept 2018. Provincial Council ghost, still closed for repairs. Awly Building across the road had been completed. Sept 2019. Ditto.)

Worcester Blvd: Art Gallery, closed & fence cordoned for repairs. Arts Center, still closed & fence cordoned for repairs. (Sept 2018. Art gallery repairs had been completed a couple of years back & Art Gallery reopened. Arts Centre repairs, on-going still. Great Hall open, but Observatory bldg, still collapsed, awaiting rebuild).

Rolleston Ave: Canterbury Museum was humming. There was a new display of old Arctic, portable plyboard huts & another display of modern Arctic modular constructions, some portable, as Arctic ice / snow moves. I watched a movie of Sir Edmund Hillary's 1950s expedition to the South Pole, his Sno Cats falling into crevasses en route. Arctic Sno Cat & tractor on display.

Botanic Gardens Visitor Centre was complete.

Durham St Nth / Chester St West: NZ Radio ghost & Spicers ghost, demolished for a law office rebuild in progress, Tavendale and Partners.

Durham St Nth / Kilmore St: On Crowne Plaza Hotel demolition site, Pallet Pavilion was gone. The relocatable wooden Arches still stood. Gap Filler wooden office still stood on site. A small digger landscaped the site with new soil by replanted grass.

Kilmore St: Town Hall ghost, still boarded, no repairs yet. The road was repaired with new tarseal in front of Forte Health glassy rebuild. (Sept 2018. Town Hall, still being repaired. Feb 2019. Repaired Town Hall reopened. 2021. Our family would attend Leah's UC graduation there. Leah had completed a post grad literacy diploma while living / teaching in S Canterbury).

Council's Black Map, a Victorian Map of Christchurch rivers & swamps, showed that Forte Heath was built on top of an underground stream flowing to Avon River. CBD bare ground, after all the CBD demolitions, made it easy to see where underground streams ran & where damage was done during the quakes. Example: Kilmore St, Salisbury St, Peterborough St had an underground stream & were all blitzed by the quakes. Town Hall ghost stood on Kilmore St beside Avon River. PGC bldg, Cambridge Tce, which collapsed in the 22.02.11 Killer Quake, was built on an old, silty levee close to Avon River. Post quake engineers & architects repeated the same swampland build stupidity as former CBD swampland builders. They were making a bullseye for the next big quake, as Christchurch CBD was built on the Christchurch Fault, which had claimed lived during the 22.02.11 Killer Quake!

Peterborough St / Manchester St crossing: Road repairs progressed. CERA's regrassing, diag opp St Lukes demolition site, was overgrown, like 9 months before when I'd last trekked by. The shabby vegetation insulted families of those who'd died in nearby PGC bldg collapse, during the 22.02.11 Killer Quake. (2021. PGC demo site would be a small grassy park backed by new bldgs & fronted by restored Edmonds Band Rotunda).

Barbadoes St Cemetery by Avon River: Many gravestones were still toppled by quakes. In the CBD all along slumped Avon River banks, the banks were restored with black material laid on river mud & pinned with steel pins. In places riverbank repairs narrowed the river to constrict & speed up water flow. (2022. Gravestones still toppled).

Fitzgerald Ave, by the post quake rebuilt, northbound bridge, overlooking Oxford Tce: While I viewed residential red zone, demolition sites, across Avon River, where Jake had once flatted in the Avon Loop, Luke pulled up in his van. A pleasant coincidence. (Sept 2019. All residential red zone houses had been demolished in the Avon Loop. Oxford Tce was being repaired, a riverside boardwalk being constructed).

Reckoning: 18.11.14. TV 1 news & The Press reported CERA boss Sutton's demise. One of his female staff had complained that Sutton got fresh with female staff, hugged female staff, calling them "honey" & "sweetie" & told sexist jokes, so Sutton announced his resignation at a press conference, even admitting mea culpa, but whining about his exhaustion.

Over 41 months or so since the 13.06.11 Quake, Sutton had overseen formation of NZ National govt red zones & NZ National govt green zones in quake trashed areas: demolitions of 1 000s of houses in residential red zones & demolitions of 100s of houses & commercial bldgs in Christchurch's CBD red zone.

Sutton had overseen SCIRT infrastructure road repairs, still incompleted & an irritant to road users, due to orange, plastic, road cone detours & sloppily repaired roads.

Sutton had also overseen NZ National govt's Blueprint for Christchurch's CBD, but so far, all the CBD had was dusty demolition sites, abandoned bldgs, a few struggling businesses & some rebuilds or revamps done by Council or the private sector: some repaired hotels, New Regent St restored businesses, repaired Cathedral Junction, Restart Cashel Mall container shops on demolition sites.

Sutton's unfinished business: No CERA Blueprint anchor projects were built yet. As for CCDU's Blueprint Frames, many bldgs had been demolished in the E Frame for Rauora Park & as an afterthought, new apartments planned. The S Frame was filled with perfectly OK, quake surviving businesses, like car dealerships, which were screwed around by Sutton's CERA until January 2015, when Sutton left. CERA then decided not to purchase most of those viable S Frame businesses & backtracked on it's S Frame, wanting just a few green lanes between bldgs.

Sutton's CERA had planted lots of grass in demolished red zones & in the E Frame in the demolished CBD. The trouble with expensive planted & mown grass was that mown grass didn't allow natural plant succession in the red zones, encouraging local fauna back to the red zones. So far, all the rebuild CERA had done was fiddle with Blueprint CBD Avon River banks, by revamping CBD riverbank paths & gardens.

Sutton's legacy: Many CERA demolitions, a study of NZ National govt's disaster management. Sutton's CERA was formed post 22.02.11 Killer Quake & would only last till April 2016. A 02.09.14, CERA media release read: CERA will become a Department Agency within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet... So all CERA's puffery during its 2011-2016 tenure would be offloaded to the PM's Dept & Cabinet. Anyone wanting CERA historical info, like zonings, demolitions, media releases... would have to apply to the PM's Dept & Cabinet, or other govt agencies, or CERA Document Archives suggested on CERA's Disestablishment website.

Friday 19.12.14. While Leah had a Xmas function at London St, I trekked the gritty CBD again & found rebuild work going on at Poplar St, where Jake had flatted pre quakes. Odeon Theatre was still part demolished, a post quake eyesore. TV news had featured a Johnny-Come-Lately touting his forthcoming book of quake trashed bldgs & had shown him sneaking into steel mesh fence cordoned, Odeon Theatre demolition site, to take pics. I'd taken many pics of post quake Odeon Theatre. The latest news flavour-of-the-month was photographers sneaking into quake trashed bldgs, like Christ Church Cathedral & taking pics. An indictment of CERA's slow demolitions & slow quake recovery.

Besides graffiti on quake ruined walls, so-called art was also found on quake trashed walls or walls of revamped bldgs, like a bowing ballerina painted on the back wall of revamped Isaac Theatre Royal. Latest art was colourful, fibreglass giraffes all over the CBD.

Manchester St / Lichfield St:  Majestic Theatre demolition site, a Council carpark.

Manchester St / High St: Workmen revamped the tram line.

High St: Lunch hour, Brick Farm, a gritty gastro-pub, full of boozy men, no women, amongst quake ruins.

Stranges Ln between Lichfield St & High St: 3 busy, new gastropubs in a new bldg & a pre-quakes, brick bldg across the lane. Stranges Ln spooked me, I didn't trust the old, brick bldg.

Cashel St / High St crossing: Three diggers parked on top of a massive, concrete rubble pile, ready for a rebuild.

Cathedral Sq: Christ Church Cathedral ghost, just as disreputable as it was months before. The Wizard was back jabbering to tourists before the ruin, an apprentice Wizard in tow. A man dressed in white leggings, white shirt, black waistcoat & tricorn hat chatted to a hobo. Men played giant chess nearby. The Council Library & Government Life ghosts were demolished at last, for NZ National govt's Blueprint Convention Centre / Te Pae.

Victoria Sq: Victoria Square apartments ghost was demolished, also for the Blueprint Convention Centre / Te Pae. Repaired Colombo St Bridge looked good beside Christchurch Town Hall.

CERA media release, 10.02.15: Warwick Isaacs to take on new challenge. Like Sutton, all that Isaacs left was a demolished, red zone CBD, mostly empty demolition sites, ghosts & a few rebuilds done by the private sector. No Blueprint anchor projects had started. Just tinkering with Avon River banks.

Reckoning: CERA media release, 29.01.15: Residential chapter release paves way for vibrant central city living. Isaacs had left shortly after CERA altered the Christchurch Central Recovery Plan & City Plan (District Plan under Resource Management Act 1991) enabling quicker rebuild of housing in the CBD, particularly CCDU's E Frame.

Isaacs: A Liveable City creates a new Central City Residential Zone which gives those building homes more flexibility in their design & allows a range of housing types for those who are keen to look at living in a vibrant central city.

We have a goal of seeing more than 20 000 people living in the central city in attractive neighbourhoods with diverse communities. The residential chapter includes more information on development initiatives such as residential development in the East Frame, an area that will be home to approximately 2 000 people and which will begin construction toward the end of the year. [By the end of 2016, no residential buildings had started in the E Frame. Sept 2018. Fletcher had begun expensive, concrete tilt slab apartments, Lichfield St / Madras St. Sept 2019. Latimer Terraces, Bedford Terraces, Bedford Apartments had been built. Liverpool Terraces, a work in progress. 2022. Lining Manchester St, concrete tilt slab apartments built].

The boost to residential activity will encourage further commercial growth and investment as people move into the central city.

The latter was obvious, but it took CERA nearly 4 years post 22.02.11 Killer Quake to admit it. CERA's original Blueprint was to use the E & S Frame as a land bank cum parkland, to improve land values for a favoured few red zone sections inside the Frame, CERA's so-called core CBD. Meanwhile quake damaged & CERA-cordon-strangled, CBD businesses relocated elsewhere, while CERA dithered.

Isaacs quit to become CEO of Stonewood Homes which soon went into liquidation.

28.02.15. On one of my Christchurch trips, I drove Luke along New Brighton Rd, past red zone, Locksley Ave turnoff, with views across Kerrs Reach & residential red zone, both sides of Avon River, to New Brighton. Luke wanted to show me salvage sites he'd worked at, like red zone, housing demolitions at Kate Sheppard Retirement Village & red zone, housing demolitions at New Brighton & Bexley.

We returned to town via Pages Rd, past red zone Bexley, Wairoa St, Waitaki St, Bexley Rd. Most houses in the residential red zone we passed were demolished. The residential red zone was scruffy with overgrown vegetation. Pages Rd Bridge was still parlous, in disrepair. A new Burger King was built on a demolition site, Aldwins Rd / Linwood Ave. Luke said, "Burger King went up pretty quickly, competition with McDonald's & KFC across the road."

Most roads I drove that day, like Bealey Ave, Fitzgerald Ave, St Asaph St... were still parlous, in disrepair. So much for SCIRT repairs. Inferior asphalt was repeatedly laid, patch on patch by contractors. Asphalt trucks roamed Christchurch, but tarseal soon cracked & needed repairs, again & again. No one was inspecting road repairs properly. SCIRT contractors made a fortune doing crap work, digging up roads over & over again.

New mayor Dalziel had recently opined that it would take another 30 years before Christchurch roads would be up to pre quake standards. Never mind massive rates increases by her Council.

Copyright Mark JS Esslemont.

See Victim upset by Suttons conduct (The Press / Stuff Co)


See Land for anchor projects reduced (The Press / Stuff Co)

See Warwick Isaacs to take on new challenge (CERA media release 10 February 2015)

See Christchurch faces 30 more years of rough roads (The Press / Stuff Co)

See Rauora Park (Christchurch City Council).

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