SITE FOR FUTURE HOSPITAL

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27402, 15 July 1954, Page 10

SITE FOR FUTURE HOSPITAL

Land On Burnside Road BLOCK BOUGHT FOR £20,000 A block of 20 acres on Burnside road, Fendalton, has been purchased as a site for a future hospital for Christchurch. The price was £lOOO an acre. Official advice of the purchase of the property has not been received yet by the North Canterbury Hospital Board, although it has been informed of the completion of the deal. The land lies between Greers road and Ham road with access from Burnside road, along which frontage development has been under way for several years. It is the last part of the block bought about 1937 by the late Mr p. C. Webb (Minister of Labour in the first Labour Government) and his business and racing associate, the late Mr G. R. Hunter (a member of the Legislative Council). They bought the land to use it as a stud farm and horse training establishment and on it they grew most of the foodstuffs for their galloping and trotting horses. In 1947, the property of 28 acres was sold at £7500, or £267 an acre, to Cotton Textiles, Ltd., a corporation which then proposed to build a light mill. The project was abandoned, as was also the proposal to build another mill on a 53-acre block on the Blenheim road, bought at a price of £2BO an acre.

The Burnside road land passed to the ownership of the Roman Catholic Shurch. Since then about one acre as been sold and the church retains seven acres after the sale of 20 acres to the Government for a hospital site. Residential sections close to the £ 1000-an-acre land have been sold recently at £BOO each. There is no intention to build soon a modern hospital on the land. Government policy is to buy suitable land as it becomes available for long term projects and to lease it until it is needed. The approval of the Director-General of Health to the purchase of the Burnside road land was received by the Hospital Board on June 23 and the sale transaction was completed soon after that date.