New building ‘topped off’

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32945, 17 June 1972, Page 16

New building ‘topped off’

The six-storey, 40,000 sq. ft building in Cranmer Square erected for the AJVLP. Society but to be occupied by the Canterbury Education Board under a lease-back arrangement reached its highest point yesterday afternoon. Present building activity was changing the skyline in the centre of Christchurch and changing it for the better, said the general manager of the AM.P. Society (Mr D. F. Walker), who carried out the traditional “toppingoff” of the building. He said that the building, begun . in March last year, would be completed early next year. The building is on three-eighths of an acre, the

main frontage on Cranmer Square but with access from Kilmore Street as well.

New buildings were an investment themselves for the future, Mr Walker said. As well as providing very pleasant working conditions, they enhanced Christchurch City generally and also provided an attractive return for A.M.P. policyholders. Mr Walker said that the A.M.P. Society was also to build a new tourist hotelparking building-office block complex in Worcester Street. The society had hoped that the hotel structure would be ready for the 1974 Commonwealth Games. This would now not be possible, but a start would be made on the hotel as soon as negotiations were complete. The Canterbury Education Board will be joined in the new building by many officers of the Department of Education who are responsible for primary inspection and advisory services. This marks only the second time in New Zealand that an Education Board and its Department of Education counterparts have been housed in one building. The only other Education Board to have its own com-

bined building is at Hamilton, where the South Auckland Education Board opened a combined building five years ago. In that case, the building was paid for from Government funds.

The Canterbury Education Board’s move to the Cranmer Square building will also mean that the board’s architectural offices which have been in Worcester Street for

more than a decade will be brought back into the main board building. The general manager of the Education Board (Mr D. Wilson) said yesterday that occupancy of the new building would mark a high point in the board’s 108-year history; bringing all officers responsible for primary education under one roof would be a major step forward.