Horticultural Hall for sale

Press, 3 July 1986, Page 8

Horticultural Hall for sale

By

SARAH SANDS,

property reporter

The Horticultural Hall in Cambridge Terrace will be sold because of parking, problems faced by its owner, the Canterbury Horticultural Society. Mr John Taylor, the society’s vice-president, said it had been decided last year to investigate the possibility of selling the hall and moving elsewhere. The society has had continuing problems with exhibitors not being able to find car-parks close enough to the hall, he said. "Parking is a problem — especially when we are setting up on a Friday night and trying to find a park on a one-way street “It is a sad story because when the hall was built there was much less traffic and Cambridge Terrace was not a oneway street” Mr Taylor said that a finance committee meeting had decided earlier this week that the building should be sold but a final decision on the sale would be made at the annual meeting later this month. A real estate agent was already handling inquiries from several interested parties, he said. The building has a Government valuation (1984) of $650,000 but it is likely to fetch a much higher price because of high

demand recently for land along the Avon River. If bought by a property developer, the hall could be demolished to make way for an office building or hotel. Mr Taylor would not disclose the asking price for the hall, which is 23 years old. . The society had not yet decided where it would move to but had looked at more than a dozen sites throughout Christchurch,

he said.'“Our present thinking is the possibility of buying a piece of bare land on which we can landscape the approaches and design it to be a horticultural feature for the city. "We also want to have land we can use for trial plots of new plant releases and unusual plants.” The society would not build another big hall like in Cambridge Ter-

race, said Mr Taylor. A marquee on a lawn would be used for big shows in the future. “What we envisage is a horticultural meeting place where we can have a library, reading room, lecture room, and a small hall.” Whoever buys the hall will have an established neighbour. The Anglican Church owns Church House, an office tower built at the

north-east corner of the Horticultural Hall. The sale of the tower block to the Church was the first sale of air space in Christchurch. Under the sale terms the Anglican Church had first option to buy the hall if the Horticultural Hall ’decided to sell, and vice versa. The Anglican Church is not interested in buying, nor is it interested in spiling its own building.