Town Hall promotion chased the funds

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33034, 29 September 1972, Page 27

Town Hall promotion chased the funds

A decision by the Christchurch City Council in July, 1957, to provide $lO,OOO in the estimates towards the cost of the Town Hall was the first realistic financial start to the project.

Hundreds of fund-raising schemes were followed in the subsequent years, but it was that resolution of the City Council which gave the vital lead.

The body which took up the need to find money and was the essential agent bringing about success was the committee known as Town Hall Promotion, an adjunct of the Canterbury Progress League. This committee came into being in August, 1957, under the chairmanship of Mr P. B. Watts. He reKrted that in requests to organisations and nine

Christchurch local bodies

to appoint representatives only six had declined. Of 158 individuals approached only 18 had declined. An appeal to raise £250,000 was launched in

July, 1958. The president of Town Hall Promotion (Mr J. L. Hay) said on February 3, 1959, that the £73,000 raised during the committee’s first year was disappointingly low. The target had been £lOO,OOO.

Indecision on the site caused reluctance in prospective donors, but in October, 1961, the committee was able to report that the revised target of £lOO,OOO had been reached. Mr Hay said that the combined funds of Town Hall Promotion and the City Council Town Hall fund were expected to amount to £175,000 by the end of the year.

At the 1969 annual general meeting of Town Hall Promotion in June it was announced that money raised totalled $425,000 and more was still coming in. Thus the original target of $500,000 had been more realistic than later thought.