Transport Board To Build Offices

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32076, 26 August 1969, Page 1

Transport Board To Build Offices

An office building in Cathedral Square, perhaps of 12 storeys, was approved by the Christchurch Trans-, port Board yesterday after it had been reported that a tenant wanted to rent eight obrs until 1980.

The acting chairman (Mr >S. E. Boanas) said after the meeting that the plan provided for the board to build a bus barn over which the City Council would eventually put a parking budding and have a tall office building facing the Square.

It was not possible to give details because the board’s architects, Minson, Henning-Hansen and Dines, would be preparing plans. A loan of sl.sm hadbeen approved by the Local Authorities’ Loans Board, the combined finance and works and traffic committees reported. They recommended that the high-rise building go ahead, subject to a satisfactory formula for the rent agreement being determined with the prospective tenant. The committee had looked first at a proposal to build accommodation solely for the board’s requirements to replace the present unsuitable building and then at whether the valuable site should be exploited to the maximum. Because a “good tenant” had approached the board to rent eight floors up to 1980, the committees thought it would be reasonable to have a high building. At the end of the loan terjn the board wogld have a valuable revenue-earning debt-free asset. There was an urgent need to provide the staff with improved working conditions

and a better cafeteria, Mr Boanas said. The existing conditions in the building,

which was erected in 1919, were sub-standard. Developers had been interested in taking over the whole property, Mr F. S. Blogg said, and their only interest was profit. That profit should go to the ratepayers. Eventually they could be saved $7900 a year or more. Mr Boanas welcomed the unanimous decision of the board to proceed with a building, and said this had been the wish of the chairman (Mr J. R. Smith) before