Department Moving To New Quarters

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31112, 15 July 1966, Page 14

Department Moving To New Quarters

The Christchurch office of the Department of Agriculture will open for business in new quarters at Demeter House, Victoria street, on Monday. The department will today complete its removal from the Provincial Council Chambers, where it has been housed for many years. The district representative in Christchurch of the State Services Commission (Mr A. O. Dare) said yesterday that Demeter House, opposite the National Radiation Laboratory, was being leased by the Department of Agriculture from Demeter Holdings, Ltd. The two-storey building, with about 17,000 sq ft of floor space, was built to the department’s specifications. The offices vacated by the Department of Agriculture will be taken over by the Justice Department. The Magistrate’s Court is expected to take over the entire building except the hall. Three new court rooms are to be built in the original wooden section. Separate civil and criminal offices are planned, which will allow court official's to deal with people in the privacy not available at present. As the Department of Agriculture moves out carpenters of the Ministry of Works will move in to make interior alterations and renovations. There will be no major structural alterations, but partitions which were put in when the chambers were built will be pulled down. The Magistrate’s Court is

likely to use the Provincial Council Chambers until new law courts are built in Christchurch. When this is likely to be done is, according to court officials, “the 64-dollar question.”