Neighbourhoods do not change easily

Press, 14 May 1982, Page 13

Neighbourhoods do not change easily

STAN DARLING

completes his two ’

part series on inner city housing areas — that “frail edge” of the city centre. ! The first report was published yester- . day. Photographs by DEAN KOZANIC

Richard Owen feels better about the future of Inner City West than he did a fewyears ago, wnen he had the only family in his block. Mr Owen, a member of Inner City Operation Neighbourhood (ICON), grew up in the area, not far from the old

historic house at the Glouces-ter-Montreal Street intersection. where he now lives. Recently, he was offered a substantial amount of money for the house, which a private club wanted for its own premises. He turned down that offer when he realised that no other place his family could find suited them so well. There are five families living in the block now. and he thinks that is a good sign for the neighbourhood. One family lives in a house that he did up and sold, after originally intending to live there himself. The house had been in flats.

There are other good signs. Mr Owen knows that St Elmo Courts — the old highrise apartment building now dominated by offices — has been bought by someone who intends to gradually improve the balance between apartments and offices. The Old Normal School conversion project in Cranmer Square, slowed by tight money problems at present, will be "a tremendous impetus" in luring people back to inner city living when it is completed, he says.

“When the neighbourhood was all in transient flats, you just saw it going down and down and down,” says Mr Owen, an investor and developer. Front yards became unslightly, and often were taken over by parking, and properties were probably not maintained as well as they should have been, even though they filled a need for cheap accommodation. The City Council's residential policy has “switched back because of the force of the neighbourhood," he says. “Some people, unless they see little office buildings going up, they think there is nothing happening down here."

The renovation of individual houses is not such a highly visible activity, but it is happening in a big way overseas, and could do the same here.

To improve the neighbourhood even more, residents have suggested a plan for blocking some streets from traffic and landscaping others. That proposal is being studied by traffic engineers. Mr Owen himself lives in a house that contains two separate, three-bedroom apartments, and owns flats nearby. He questions whether some houses in the neighbourhood will ever go back to singlefamily dwellings: they have been so divided ahd changed into small flats that they would be expensive to convert. But those buildings, if they come on the market, could be removed to make way for new houses.

Mr Owen says the community hopes that the present Christchurch Girls’ High School building can -be retained for some use when the new school is completed in several years. If the Department of Education uses it as administrative offices, he would like to see at least part of the space used for adult education courses.

ICON is fighting the closure of Hagley High School, where such classes are now available, but some members think that the Government may use spending cuts and the new high school in some sort of. trade-off that could mean the end of Hagley High. Mr Owen says the Hospital Board "hate us like mad" because of ICON’S opposition to their activities in Cashel Street, but the community was right in pressing its case any way it could. "We would be happy to see

doctors practices along - Cashel Street, if they live' there, too." he says. “That’s the idea - the most important use of a place should be : as a house.”

He says the two-year-ofcl ICON movement is amazing. "Where you didn't know many people before, you nowknow a whole neighbourhood.

Mr John Cameron, who bought a house in flats at the corner of Cranmer Square and Armagh Street several years ago and is helping to redesign and convert it, says that traffic will remain the neighbourhood’s worst problem as long as present street, patterns exist. < "It's the vibration, mostly,'* he says. “You get used to the; noise,’ as background. It iss easier to deal with tham barking dogs and screaming: kids in the suburbs. But these houses are not built for the vibration.” Mr. Cameron and other ICON members were the i ones ;who persisted in the : case against the Hospital Board uses further south. Medical centres and other non-residential uses "have a geometrical effect on a neighbourhood, and a street’ goes down pretty quickly," he says. “I'm not against those services. but people should be living along t'here."

Mr Cameron has no illusions about the neighbourhood's preservation for residential uses being an easy one.

Many of the houses are large, and could be too expensive for individuals to buy as private, single-unit houses. : But he thinks there may be a middle way.

“The idea that you must own your own house is going to go,” he says. “One way around the cost could be for two or more people to buy a house jointly." They could

have separate living areas with some common rooms, such as a kitchen. Or there could be more conversions of buildings into high-class flats, with rents of $l2O to $l5O a week.

“I think this area could become more like Parnell, upper middle class,” he says. He came to the neighbourhood because he liked the idea of working from home, and being within walking distance of anywhere he had to go in the city centre, as he had done overseas. “I followed the advice that . you should have’ the most expensive house you can af- ' ford, and the cheapest. car you can get away with,” he isays. “It is ridiculous to own ka car unless you commute. It »can cost $9O a week to own jand operate a car. ? “If I didn’t already have an fold dunger, it would be ♦cheaper for me to. hire one ♦when I needed it."

i Mr Cameron' says the neighbourhood will -have to wait about five yearn to see 0f the council's policy works iy attracting pedple to places they can affopd.

If the council holds the line on its policy, that could hjave an effect on property

prices in the neighbourhood. As long as there was a chance of office or commercial development some day, prices would not stabilise for long.

“The council's attitude is wait and see," he says. “If properties are not sold, they could be open to the argument th£t the policy is not working.. The tide may change again.”

Traffic will remain a problem because “you can't have a residential and cultural enclave and still have heavy traffic through the middle of it. That’s the basic inconsistency of the scheme.”

As a property owner with his house in Cranmer Square, he takes one side of an issue on which ICON does not have a common stand — he wants to see Montreal Street go through the middle of the Square, with surrounding streets closed to traffic. That would make Cranmer Square more accessible, and leave more room for grass.

It is not used much now because people have to cross the traffic stream to get to it, Mr Cameron says. “At present it is just a speedway-cum-parking lot with a green hole in the middle.”