NEW CLUB BUILDING

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30484, 4 July 1964, Page 1

NEW CLUB BUILDING

The Christchurch Club expects, within a year, to have completed plans and financial arrangements to erect a six-storey building on its present site with ground-level car parking space underneath.

The president (Mr P. D. Hall) said yesterday that the project would proceed, as the club had had no approach from the Government for the use of any of its site for a new police headquarters.

Mr Hall said the club was warned, about 10 years ago, that the Government might want its present site, and another property was bought in Cambridge terrace. A year later the Government said it would not need the present site, so the Cambridge terrace block was later sold to the city council as part of the town hall site.

The club proposed to occupy the bottom two floors of its projected new building and let the rest, Mr Hail said. When the present 100-year-old club building was demolished, temporary accommodation would be obtained elsewhere. Activities would not be suspended during rebuilding.

The club has 325 members. The Christchurch Club was founded in 1856, the first meeting being held in a lodging house on the site of the present Gladstone Hotel. The members were mostly

country residents who wanted accommodation and other facilities when they visited Christchurch. An acre site on the corner of Latimer square and Worcester street was bought in 1858, and the first meeting was held in the present building on May 1, 1862.

The club has dining, smoking, billiards, bridge, and women’s rooms, plus a library, on the ground floor, and 25 bedrooms upstairs. A preliminary sketch of the proposed building, prepared by a committee of architect members of the club, is shown above.