Space Offered For Parking Building

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30861, 21 September 1965, Page 1

Space Offered For Parking Building

A proposal that the Christchurch City Council provide a parking building as part of the redevelopment of the Transport Board’s land in Cathedral square and Hereford place, where it wants to build a new office block and bus barn, was put to the council last evening.

The council agreed to consider the board’s offer favourably on condition that the Local Authorities’ Loans Board approves and the council controls the design and development of the parking section of the project.

The board said it was anxious to proceed with its building programme to provide for its administrative purposes and much-needed staff amenities. The best location was on the Square property.

In the interests of the citizens of metropolitan Christchurch, the site should be developed to the maximum. It proposed to build an office block to the maximum permissible height for its own needs and for letting. Staff amenities could be ac commodated above the bus barn, but if this was done the valuable sky space would re main unexploited. The board offered the coun cil the air space above the bus bar in which to build an off street parking building with amenities for the board’s stafi on top rented to the board.

There was a definite demand for off-street parking in the area, where in general commuter parking should be discouraged, the council’s offstreet parking committee said. Traffic movements generated by the building could be accommodated satisfactorily in the adjacent street system provided the capacity of the; building was limited to .3501 spaces. The cost of the project was given as £7OOO for demolition; if existing buildings, £360,000' for the administration building, £85.000 for the bus parking on the ground floor, and £275,000 for the cost of the .parking building with ramps. “The board owns a veryvaluable piece of city freehold, and just to have a bus barn on it would not be a

proper use of a civic amenity,” said Cr. H. G. Hay. It would not be a parking building in the Square, he said. The building would be concealed by the board’s administration building. Access to the parking building would be from Worcester street, and cars would be disgorged into Hereford street, and not into Cathedral square. “The council must grasp this opportunity to have a parking building in the central area,” Cr. Hay said. If the council had to buy the site it would cost a lot of money.