Offices For Education Bd

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31760, 17 August 1968, Page 1

Offices For Education Bd

A two-storey office building of 20,000 sq. ft will be built for the Canterbury Education Board close to the corner of Kilmore Street and Cranmer Square. For the first time in many years, all the board’s staff and professional advisers will be under one roof.

The building will be erected by the Australian Mutual Provident Society, to which the board will sell the site in Kilmore Street, on which it now has a double-unit manual training centre. The board will then lease the whole building from the A.M.P. Society. This arrangement closely matches that made for the board’s present offices at 196198 Oxford Terrace, overlooking the Avon River and the Provincial Council buildings, which were built to the board’s specifications in 1918 but are owned by and leased from the Christchurch Working Men’s Club next door. It is expected that the change will be made at the beginning of 1970.

The architects for the new building are Messrs Hall and MacKenzie.

Some negotiations are still to be completed.

Within the next few weeks it is expected that negotiations will be completed for the acquisition of adjoining land which will give another frontage in Cranmer Square. The new offices will bring the Education Board’s staff together and also bring them closer to others with whom they have most dealings. The South Island regional office of the Education Department will be directly across Cranmer Square. The present Christchurch Teachers’ College will be across Kilmore and Peterborough Streets. Associated institutions will be nearby.

When the change comes, the board’s architectural offices (now in Worcester Street east) will be moved into the new building and the manual training centre will be moved to the architect’s present site. Inspectors of primary schools

will move from a house in Kilmore Street to the new offices. Advisers in special subjects such as science, art and craft, and music who are now scattered, will also move. The new site will also pro-

vide limited off-street parking for the many callers on the Education Board. It is hoped that tenders for the new building will be called by the end of this year.