The School of Music proposal undermines our heritage and fails to deliver for our city, says Christchurch Central MP Brendon Burns
The proposal to put a modern building on the heritage Arts Centre site is symptomatic of several issues facing Christchurch.
First, it rather blatantly under-lines the lack of regard and protection often shown towards the very thing that makes Christchurch unique and brings visitors here – the neo-Gothic and Edwardian architecture of our city. Every day, character homes and buildings are lost, pulled like rotten teeth, replaced with shiny new edifices. Even eminent architects find it difficult to stop the jarring that occurs when new tilt-slab is inserted alongside old stone or weatherboard. Now that an Australian architectural consultant has commented thus to the City Council, an effort is underway to tweak the new conservatorium and make it look a little more Mountford. I won’t hold my breath.
Secondly, the project resonates with preference. As someone who spent eight years on a polytechnic council, I know too well that polytechnics tend to be the poor cousins of the tertiary sector. As the MP representing the inner city, I personally favour bringing more students into our inner city and helping revitalise it. The CPIT campus students make the redevelopment of the High St/Lichfield St work. There are ten thousand students providing a lot of spend for the south-eastern CBD, from morning lattes to late-night lagers and much in between. You have to ask how a hundred or so university music students and associated staff will rejuvenate the area around the Arts Centre?
I accept that the deal will help prop up the Arts Centre itself but council could chose to divert the funding from any development it funded, on any site, to this cause.
Thirdly, there is the need to maximise any public investment, especially in these difficult economic times. The City Council is currently engaged in a review of community facilities. If a school hall, a church hall and a council meeting place are all within a few hundred yards of each other, often sitting idle and in need of maintenance, it can make sense, from a community perspective, to concentrate on one decent facility. The best possible use of capital and resources has to be considered, whether ratepayer or taxpayer or private sector funding is involved.
If the city council has $25 million to spend on supporting an education initiative, it makes sense to coordinate this in a way that makes it work for our city, rather than a particular institution. Canterbury University has around 120 full-time equivalent music students; CPIT has 300. From the city’s perspective, a conservatorium deserves to be available for use by students from both institutions and beyond. I understand Christ’s College would like more room for its music students to practice but doesn’t see much opportunity for access to the Conservatorium as proposed. That’s because the School of Music building is shoe-horned onto the Arts Centre site. It has to provide numerous rooms for one-on-one coaching as well as a 300-person auditorium. Car parking is having to be provided by the expensive and some suggest risky option of going underground in an area with a notoriously high water-level. Beyond not being able to share facilities with the bigger and brilliant CPIT jazz school, the Conservatorium has no capacity for its own future growth.
Again, if we were looking at a city-focussed rather than institution-driven facility, sense dictates that consideration also be given to providing a home for our Christchurch Symphony Orchestra. Its constant financial challenges are exacerbated by the lack of a permanent home. Addressing that for our city should be an essential feature of any new School of Music.
I did not rush to judgement on the School of Music proposal. However, my concerns strengthened in discovering that a similar proposal in Wellington’s has faced years of delays and cost escalations. The project has gone from $30m to what is now believed to be $90m for a project with a similar sized auditorium but three times as many students. Even with a now deleted Government promise to contribute $11.5m and the support of both Victoria and Massey universities, the project has dragged on for more than five years.
A $25m conservatorium including 40 carparks for the City Council might be technically possible but I doubt even Sir Miles can do justice on that budget to Mountford’s iconic heritage site and give Christchurch something we can be proud of and which helps us compete for students and visitors.
Entries (RSS)