How Christchurch got sucked into an eye-wateringly expensive cathedral rebuild

Analysis: The thought came, unbidden.

In February 2011, when people told me Christchurch buildings had collapsed in the earthquake, I thought: “Not the cathedral.”

It’s strange to me now I didn’t think of people first, considering 185 people died that day in various parts of the city, including 115 people in the CTV building.

But the Anglican Christ Church Cathedral, in the city’s centre, had become part of a romanticised narrative after the quake, centred south-west of the city, five months earlier, when the cathedral stayed upright, and no one died.

We’d dodged a bullet, we told ourselves. It was a miracle – one that religious people probably thought was a sign from God. (That’s a more charitable view than Brian Tamaki’s, in 2016, that quakes were caused by “gays, sinners and murderers”.)

On that terrible Tuesday in February 2011, the cathedral’s spire came down, sparking a chain of events which led us to this past weekend, and the latest twist in the cathedral rebuild saga.

At 5.30am this past Saturday, a press release sent by public relations company Convergence said the cathedral would have to be mothballed unless a “new funding pathway” for the rebuild was found.

Mark Stewart, who chairs Christ Church Cathedral Reinstatement Ltd, revealed in the statement the project’s estimated cost had blown out to $248 million, leaving a funding gap of $114m. The finish date had been pushed back to 2031.

The project urgently needed $30m by September to continue strengthening work.

(All this was echoed in the morning’s Press newspaper, headlined: “Cathedral may be mothballed.” The online version’s headline added “unless a $30m lifeline is found”.)

This is just the latest twist in a campaign for the soul, and wallets, of the city and the country, swirling around a building considered by many to be central to its identity. Indeed, the cathedral and Avon River are on the city council’s logo.

Using The Press’s letters page as a yardstick, there’s much work to do to convince some, at least, of the need to spend that much on rebuilding the city’s most prominent Gothic Revival building, which was consecrated in 1881.

“Sadly, the sacred cow has become a white elephant,” wrote Vic Smith, of Halswell, in a letter published on Monday.

The cost blowout was as predictable as it was lamentable, wrote others.

“Can we please stop building a monument to the past, and to the city’s civic ego, and get on with living and supporting life now?” wrote Mark Crozier Murphy, who lives over the Port Hills in Ōhinetahi/Governor’s Bay.

In 2012, and for many years beyond, the cathedral was a symbol of the quake’s destruction, and the city’s indecision. It became a lightning rod for anger, particularly at the Anglican Church.

Now, with much of the central city’s renewal complete – think Riverside Market, new bars and restaurants overlooking the Avon River, or the cluster of eateries at Little High – the ruin seems a memorial to another time.

The cathedral, and with it Cathedral Square, once the city’s beating heart, have flatlined. They’re struggling for relevance – which is a dangerous place to be with a huge shortfall to find.

To better judge how much value the Ōtautahi of today puts on its cathedral, it helps to remember how we got here.

That necessitates a journey into a campaign waged against the Anglican Church, and Christchurch’s Bishop at the time, Victoria Matthews, and sifting the various claims and promises made.

Once the city emerged from the shock of the collapsed cathedral spire, and the surprise no bodies were found underneath it, work began on assessing the damage.

(Quakes in June and December of 2011 caused significant new damage to the building, which was deconsecrated in November of that year.)

It wasn’t just the cathedral, of course. Seventeen churches and other parish buildings needed to be demolished, and a further 194 diocesan buildings were destroyed or damaged.

The Anglican church was in a precarious financial position – not least because the cathedral was insured for “functional replacement value”, or roughly $39 million. An early quantity surveyor’s report estimated rebuilding the cathedral could cost as much as $215 million.

After being issued with an unsafe building notice, the church decided the cathedral was too damaged to repair, and demolition began in March 2012. It wanted to bring the building down to a height of two or three metres, from which a new cathedral would rise.

A month later, the first sod was turned in the construction of a temporary cardboard cathedral, which is still standing in Latimer Square.

News emerged, just after Anzac Day, of a group opposing the demolition, who met with members of the church, including Matthews, and presented a proposal to fully restore the building.

The respected public face of the campaign, the Great Christchurch Buildings Trust, were former MPs (from opposite sides of the political spectrum) Jim Anderton, a Catholic and heritage advocate, and Philip Burdon, the Rich Lister businessman behind Meadow Mushrooms.

Legal action would be a last resort, the group said.

Numbers were thrown around, publicly, about the rebuild cost. Public surveys were conducted, and engineering reports commissioned.

The church dug in. Matthews said the cathedral could be rebuilt, theoretically, but once the cost reached $100m “you have to ask if that’s a moral response”. The new cathedral would be a mix of old and new.

(Matthews, a Canadian, was the fifth woman to be consecrated as Anglican bishop worldwide, when she elected Bishop of Edmonton in 1997. She became Bishop of Christchurch 11 years later.)

In August 2012, the last resort had been reached; Anderton’s and Burdon’s trust said it would file documents in the High Court to stop the demolition. A two-day hearing was held in October.

Fascinating legal arguments

It was the Canterbury Association which declared, in 1851, specific land would be held on trust to establish and maintain “ecclesiastical and education institutions”.

The deed refers to “The Cathedral Square”, and a clause said the site should be used “for the erection of a Cathedral” in connection with the Church of England. An express trust for the erection of a cathedral was declared in 1858.

All those years later, at the High Court, it was found a bricks and mortar building was required on the site – a rejection of the church’s position that the land was held, basically, for the advancement of religion.

The nub of the legal battle was this: Great Christchurch Buildings Trust said there was an obligation to maintain and repair “the” cathedral, while the Anglican custodians, Church Property Trustees, preferred the indefinite article, “a” cathedral.

Buildings Trust trustees Burdon, Anderton and Graeme Brady told the court they were confident funds for the restoration could be found at home and abroad.

Justice Lester Chisholm, noting the intense public interest, ordered a halt to the demolition. But the Buildings Trust failed in its principal objective of forcing the church to repair and restore the cathedral to its original state.

Rather than finding the church’s decisions unlawful, Chisholm said they were incomplete. It had only an “informal” intention to rebuild on the cathedral site, rather than taking a firm decision.

The legal battle was taken to the Court of Appeal, and a hearing held in April 2013.

About the same time, the fight over rebuild figures resumed.

The church released three proposed options for the cathedral, and public input was sought.

The most expensive option, restoring its original form using the same materials, would cost up to $221m, and take up to 22 years. The cheapest, a reinterpreted timber structure, would cost between $56m and $74m, and take up to nine-and-a-half years.

Anderton, who died in 2018, said it was no surprise the costliest and slowest option was to fully restore the building.

On May 1, 2013, a Wednesday, The Press led its front page with a story from the Great Christchurch Buildings Trust, which claimed the cathedral could be rebuilt for only $67 million, and take a quarter of the estimated time.

But the trust was dealt another blow in July, when the Court of Appeal dismissed its appeal. The Supreme Court also ruled the church was free to demolish the cathedral and build another one.

In September 2013, the church announced, after a Synod vote, it had opted for a modern design, costing about $60m.

However, by March 2015, in a bid to head off more legal challenges, it said it would reconsider.

Appointment to break deadlock

The Government appointed Miriam Dean QC to try and break the deadlock in 2015. Her report, announced two days before Christmas, suggested the cathedral’s rebuild would cost $105m, and be finished by 2022. The project would be complex and risky, it was noted.

Matthews, the Bishop, said she was open to the idea of a rebuild, and a working group was established. Building a modern cathedral remained firmly on the table, however.

Anderton was confident the estimated $40m funding gap could be met. “We’ve got international corporates and wealthy individuals who all have expressed significant interest in this building.” Restoration “really is the only option”, he said.

The next day, Burdon said he would chip in $1m. Restore Christ Church Cathedral Group co-chairperson Mark Belton added, in the same RNZ story: “There is so much energy in New Zealand for this and obviously in Christchurch and also around the world that I’m confident the support will be found.”

As discussions and negotiations ground on, quakes in February 2016 further damaged the cathedral.

The working group’s report was finally released in May 2017. It recommended the building be reinstated, suggesting the church’s insurance payout, the government and the city council could cover half the estimated $105m cost, with the rest raised in three to five years.

(The government would later offer grants and loans totalling $25m, and the city council $10m.)

Matthews countered the building wasn’t globally significant, like the Taj Mahal. “I think the money is better spent helping people.”

The crunch came in September 2017 – more than six years after the spire fell – when the Anglican Synod voted overwhelmingly to rebuild the cathedral, swayed by the government’s generous funding offer.

Matthews stood down six months later. Christ Church Cathedral Reinstatement Ltd was established to deliver the restoration, which was expected to be finished in 2027.

The next six years are worthy of a quick montage.

Faced with more delays because of Covid-19, the government proposed a fast-track for the rebuild’s consents. In October 2020, a $50m cost blowout, to $154m, was announced.

It was safe enough for workers, who entered the building in August 2022.

Then, in March of this past year, stabilisation works were completed. (Also, the estimated cost ticked up to $160m.) For the first time since in 12 years, community leaders and project managers gathered inside.

Project chair Mark Stewart said at the time there were four years to go. “It was important for us to pause today and acknowledge how far we have come, to celebrate the team which has got us here, what they have achieved and how we’re playing our part to reinstate the heart of Christchurch.”

Fast-forward to this past weekend, and Stewart’s press statement announcing the cost blowout to $248m, and a four-year delay for completion.

He cited problems such as stronger-than-expected walls, more water than expected under the tower, and foundations shallower than the 1881 drawings led project managers to believe.

Gone was the certainty about bridging the funding gap, or comments about the ease with which overseas benefactors could be found. Instead, an urgent plea was made for $30m by August, lest the cathedral be mothballed.

In all, there’s $134m already raised or pledged. (Rubbing salt in the wounds, that’s more than double the 2013 estimate of the modern cathedral option.)

The tally includes $25m from central government, $10m from the city council, $24m in donations, and $33m of insurance proceeds. Less certain is a further $42m to be found in philanthropic donations, and from the Anglican Church.

This latest cost escalation couldn’t have come at a worse time.

The Government, grappling with high inflation, is ordering departments and ministries to cut costs, translating into more than 1000 jobs lost so far, to find savings for tax cuts. Meanwhile, the city council is already consulting on its 10-year plan, with a proposed double-digit rates rise.

Who will pay for the cathedral rebuild? Another pertinent question is, what is Christchurch’s appetite for it?

“It’s beyond the point of no return. So, one way or the other, we are going to have to complete this building.”

Cathedral rebuild advocate Philip Burdon

Philip Burdon, one half of the respected duo fronting the rebuild campaign, tells Newsroom he was invited by local campaigners, including Graeme Brady and Humphrey Rolleston, to join the Great Christchurch Buildings Trust.

“I became involved because I thought it was a unique part of our history, our heritage, the symbol of the city, [and out of] symbolic respect for the ambitions and aspirations of the founding fathers.”

(He’s putting his money where his mouth is, paying $400,000 a year, up to $5m, towards the cathedral’s restoration.)

Burdon opposes the view put by Bishop Victoria Matthews in 2017, that, in his words, the Christian mission should be more concerned with the poor, the infirm, the destitute, and the needy, rather than physical buildings. He believes they’re complementary.

“It’s very, very wrong to be utterly one-dimensional,” he says. “The worthy social aspirations shouldn’t be seen as automatically excluding the symbolic reality of a physical construction.”

Spending public money on the restoration is worthy of consideration, he says, “for those who want to value the heritage and history of this country”. He puts the cathedral alongside other projects worthy of public funding, like the Treaty of Waitangi grounds, and Wellington’s cenotaph; more locally, the Arts Centre and museum.

And the opportunity cost, of spending that amount of money on a building?

“That is a debate that’s obviously going to take place, and indeed is taking place.”

With $77m already spent on the project, and $8m left in the kitty, the cathedral has to be completed, Burdon says. “It’s beyond the point of no return. So, one way or the other, we are going to have to complete this building.”

Urban designer Jim Lunday, a Scot, has a deep connection to the central city. He used to have an office in the square’s Regent Theatre building, in the dome, which collapsed in the quake. (His company can now be found in the Arts Centre.)

For just over two years, ending in January 2018, he was employed to re-imagine Cathedral Square as general manager of regeneration planning for a joint Crown-council agency Regenerate Christchurch.

Lunday admits to not having an emotional reaction to news of the cost blowout. “Cathedrals in Europe have taken hundreds of years to finish,” he says. “So is it such a big deal if it goes on?”

All the so-called anchor projects in post-quake Christchurch have been slow, he notes.

Around the Square, the half-billion-dollar convention centre, Te Pae, is open now, sure, and the $92m central library, Tūranga is complete. Just up Colombo St, $167m was spent fixing the Town Hall.

Much is left to do.

There’s a funding crisis at the Arts Centre, New Zealand’s biggest cluster of historic buildings, and the $683m central-city stadium is unfinished, as is the troubled and legally contested construction of the Metro Sports Centre, which is expected to cost more than $400m.

Some will say if money can be found for those projects, then Christ Church Cathedral should be on that list, surely. Just imagine the ambition it took to build it, in the 1870s, when the city had 22,000 residents.

The colonial settlers were building for the future, Lunday says. “Maybe we need to get positive and think we’re only here for a short time: What are we going to do for the future?”

However that’s down to the city’s priorities, he says, at a time when there are other big-ticket items to pay for, like water infrastructure.

The bigger tragedy for Lunday is Cathedral Square is irrelevant to the city. Whatever happens with the cathedral shouldn’t hold the Square back further, he says.

Ever the maverick, Lunday muses about what would be possible if the cathedral was mothballed as a partial ruin, but made accessible and safe for the public.

“It’d be fantastic for a rave,” he says. “Imagine having the national symphony orchestra for a candelit performance.”

Māori tribe Ngāi Tahu has been clear, since the 2011 quake, what it thinks should happen with the cathedral.

“The last thing we wanted to build was a city with our designs in it, and [that] it would become a godless city, with godless people,” says Te Maire Tau, Ūpoko of Ngāi Tahu hapu Ngāi Tūāhuriri, a professor at University of Canterbury’s Ngāi Tahu research centre.

“The cathedral is the centre of that city, and it needs to be established, and it needs to be supported.”

Ngāi Tahu has pursued building in the post-quake city according to its values, he says, so it was important to know the values of the original settlers and the founding families.

The reality is Aotearoa was colonised, which is something to be learned from and celebrated, Tau says. “This isn’t Africa, having gone through decolonisation, and it’s not Asia. New Zealand’s not a decolonised country, so we have to embrace both.”

Back to the rebuild costs. Is there another way to take the financial strain off the Anglican church?

With the Catholic Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, on Barbadoes St, also being demolished, many have suggested a single building be built in the Square, paid for by both denominations.

“Aren’t they the same God?” asks former Christchurch mayor Garry Moore, who is calling for courageous leadership and sideways thinking in the face of the cost blowout.

“It’s a nice, tidy thought,” Burdon offers. However, he says solving that centuries-old theological divide is up to the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Instead, Newsroom approached their respective representatives in New Zealand.

Christchurch Anglican Bishop Peter Carrell – chair of Church Property Trustees, and who sits on the board of Christ Church Cathedral Reinstatement Ltd – and Christchurch Catholic Bishop Michael Gielen, issued this joint statement:

“As Bishops of the Catholic and Anglican Dioceses of Christchurch, we share the view that a combined cathedral is highly impractical. The busyness of each of our respective cathedrals would mean both communities would have to relinquish aspects of our worship and our ministries.

“A cathedral is the ‘mother church’ of a diocese, whether Catholic or Anglican. It is a source of unity, based around the place of the bishop. A cathedral could not be the home of two bishops.

“While we continue to seek ways to strengthen bonds between our respective Anglican and Catholic brothers and sisters, a joint cathedral is not part of that journey.”

There’s another bishop we should hear from.

After years of fighting tooth and nail for the church to construct a modern building in Cathedral Square, Victoria Matthews is entitled to “I told you so” vibes about the escalating costs. However, the former Christchurch bishop remains steadfastly Christian.

From Ontario, Canada, where she now lives, she says: “No comment from me other than any decision about buildings after an earthquake has an element of risk and that is what is being experienced now.”

A footnote to this story. The Great Christchurch Buildings Trust will be wound up, Burdon confirms, with funds transferred to the Reinstatement Trust.

His advocacy work appears at an end but Newsroom asks him to peer into a crystal ball.

Will the cathedral be finished in 2031? “I hope so.”