Blair Block to be developed

Press, 18 May 1984, Page 5

Blair Block to be developed

Property reporter

Blair Block, the Housing Corporation’s proposed subdivision in Avonhead, will be developed privately and the sections sold on the open market.

The corporation’s manager of rental housing in Christchurch, Mr C. E. Consedine, said yesterday that the decision — “a radical departure from tradition” — had been taken because the corporation did not have the funds to do the work itself.

Development costs for the 40ha block had been tenta-

tively estimated at $4 million to $6 million and the profit margin at “perhaps $1 million,” he said. The land, near a shopping centre and a school, might yield 450 sections with an average sale price at current value of about $35,000. Mr Consedine said that the proposition had not yet been formally advertised but that the corporation had sounded out known propertydevelopers and received a good response. The plan was that the developer would carry all costs and be given land as payment, he said. The cor-

poration also hoped to barter some of the sections for others in “less attractive or lower-priced areas of the city.”

One site in the Blair Block might be exchanged for two or three in Bromley, Mairehau or Linwood, he said.

Asked why the corporation had acquired land in such a pricey location, Mr Consedine said that it had been bought by the Ministry of Works in 1953 and that it was “very difficult to foresee then how building patterns would go.” The Minister of Housing,

Mr Friedlander, announced this week the introduction of a three-year development programme to provide the corporation New Zealand wide with up to 2500 new residential sections. Mr Consedine said that these would be developed by the corporation “in the traditional way.” They would not be farmed out to the private sector. The corporation had about 160 serviced building sites available for use now and that was probably sufficient to see it through the next couple of years, he said.