Fair To Move Next Year

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29138, 25 February 1960, Page 24

Fair To Move Next Year

This will be the last year in which the New Zealand Industries Fair will be held in the old brewery in Ferry road, and the last in which the Canterbury Manufacturers’ Association will hold its fair in leased buildings. For next year, the association will move the fair into the new Canterbury Court building to be erected at the Addington Show Grounds and to be administered jointly by the association and the Canterbury Agricultural and Pastoral Association.

The new industrial and rural exhibition hall of 25,000 sq. ft. will help greatly in laying out an attractive fair. In the past, using leased or rented buildings, the fair organisers have had to improvise on many occasions. One man who will be particularly pleased to see the move is the Manufacturers’ Association secretary (Mr R. T. Alston), who will share the secretaryship of the new exhibition hall with the A. and P. Association (Mr H. M. Studholme). This year is the twenty-third year in which Mr Alston has organised a fair; and he has long looked forward to the day when space and accommodation problems would be oyer. Mr Alston began in 1937 when the fair was held in the wool store of Dalgety and Company,

Ltd., in Moorhouse avenue. The fair was then run as the winter show, with industrial products sharing the space with farm pro* duce.

King Edward Barracks became the site of several industries fairs, but as New Zealand’s manufacturing production increased and there was a greater demand for space the barracks walls became too confined and “spill-overs” were arranged into other buildings. When New Zealand Breweries, Ltd., concentrated all their business at new headquarters, the old brewery building in Ferry road was sold to the Christchurch Transport Board. The board did not need the building immediately, and the manufacturers saw the chance of having some security of tenure for the fairs while their search for a permanent site continued.

From dusty and dark storage rooms, the old brewery buildings have emerged clean and orderly each year for the fair.

But each year, the space available for the fair in Ferry road has shrunk; and it will be with a sense of relief that Mr Alston and the staff, many of whom return year after year, will move out on March 12—-relief that the days of improvisation will be over. jj ’>