Property developer 'well established’

Press, 7 December 1981, Page 4

Property developer 'well established’

At 28, Mr Chris Berryman, the developer of Christchurch’s old Normal School, is well established in his chosen career of dealing in property. A hard worker, he says of himself: “I have always been active. People find me difficult to live with because I just don’t stop. “It is all work for me. I love work,” he said. Mr Berryman comes of a South Island farming family and attended Nelson College while his family was farming at Clarence,. After leaving school- he became a farm worker, shearer and then a process worker at N.Z. Forest Products mill in Tokoroa. At 19 he went to Sydney, Australia, where for four years he studied accountancy at evening classes at the SydneyTechnical Institute. When about half way through his course he became an accounts clerk in a Sydney stationery firm. When he left seven years later he had become a director. Mr Berryman said that because the company, of which he had come to own half, worked on a board system he was unable to run it as he wished, and left. However, he did not make any money from the business, he said. The money for the Normal School. development had come from buying and selling properties in Sydney. A Sydney real estate agent said that Mr Berryman dealt in property, and that his agency had auctioned several substantial properties for him. Mr Berryman’s- former home at Boxhill had fetched “quite a substantial sum” recently, the agent said.

Mr Berryman said that he began by buying properties, doing them up, and reselling them, then just buying and reselling. He mostly bought places just outside Sydney because people there loved to get out of the city. He bought and sold at least a dozen properties, maybe more, he said. He made regular business trips to Christchurch for the stationery company, and on one trip had seen the Christchurch City Council’s former civic chambers for sale. He saw the opportunity for development and approached the council at the end of last year with his idea for a night club. However, he has had to wait months for a licence from the Liquor Licensing Control Commission and

feels he is now unlikely to get one. He has let the chambers’ option lapse and has put his energies into the ownership flat scheme. in the Normal School complex. Mr Berryman said that he still dealt in property in Christchurch, and although he was reluctant to give details it is believed that he owns at least two motel-flat blocks. In May he registered three companies — Berryman Holdings, Berryman Properties, and /Berryman Enter-tainments,.-The last two are held under the umbrella of Berryman Holdings, whose shareholders include two brothers and his parents, who now live in Christchurch. Mr Berryman holds the most shares.