Arts Centre landscaping plan accepted

Press, 21 July 1989, Page 4

Arts Centre landscaping plan accepted

By

DAVID CLARKSON

A landscaping plan for the Christchurch Arts Centre has been adopted by the centre’s trust board, but the chairman, Mrs Helen Holmes, admits it will be “dinosaur years” before the work can proceed.

After eight months, toe board has decided to go ahead with the Boffa Miskell Associates plan which will involve moving the Arts Centre Market from toe two quadrangles it now occupies to a site near toe eastern end of toe block.

The proposal to move has upset some of the market’s stall-holders, who have gathered almost 6000 signatures on a petition to oppose it The secretary of the stall-holders committee, Ms Chrissie Terpstra, said the group would continue lobbying, and planned a meeting for Saturday to discuss what action to take.

It was ironic that the board would make its decision after so many had signed toe petition, she said.

She hoped that toe stallholders would be able to meet toe board to discuss possible solutions.

“That is what we have wanted all along. Getting our point of view heard has been very difficult,” she said.

“It seems like every step of the way, toe stallholders have not been taken seriously. “We don’t have anything against the proposal. It is the treatment of toe market, when we earn them nearly $300,000 a year and get no recognition and acknowledgement of our worth.

“We would quite happily move if we were assured that we would be

moved into an area where the quality of space was as good as the present quadrangles,” she said. The board has passed a motion to adopt the landscaping proposal as a general policy statement and proceed with the implementation as finance permits.

Mrs Holmes said the trust board had the tasks of setting rentals which artists and groups could afford, while conserving, preserving and maintaining the historic buildings.

“The stall-holders are a part of it all, but only a part. They are a colourful promotion that brings a lot of people in,” she said.

The board could not even consider financing the landscaping work out of rentals from tenants. Rentals provided enough for administration, promotion and minor maintenance of toe buildings.

To do toe new work, the board would have to find public money, she said.

“We must look to the city, the region, toe Government, the Arts Council and toe Lotteries Board,” she said.

The city and the region were undergoing so many changes there was no likelihood that they would consider any decisions of this kind for six months or so, she said. Any movement on toe project was a long way ahead. “We are talking dinosaur years,” she said. She acknowledged that toe stall-holders were unhappy, but she said the board had a mass of information on which to make its decision.

She would not place a cost on the proposal. However, earlier reports have put the price of the Arts Centre landscape redevelopment at more than $500,000.