Friday 27 May 2016

Hearings panel recommends partial sale of QEII Park land to Ministry of Education

A hearings committee is recommending that Christchurch City Council approve the sale of 11.5 hectares of QEII Park to the Ministry of Education, with minor modifications to the original proposal.

Consultation on the proposal to sell the land ran from 2 March – 3 April, gathering 381 submissions from local residents and school communities. The Ministry has proposed using the land, which is in the southeast corner of the park, for the relocation of Avonside Girls' and Shirley Boys' High Schools.

The committee was chaired by Hagley–Ferrymead Councillor Yani Johanson, who was joined by Burwood–Pegasus Councillors David East and Glenn Livingstone. Cr Johanson says that the deliberations saw them consider the feedback, hear from 14 submitters who requested a chance to speak, and make a site visit to QEII Park to see first-hand how some of the issues raised might affect the area were the sale to go ahead.

"Council staff have analysed each of the submissions and it's clear that the majority of people gave strong support for a site to be used for the schools, but had a number of concerns, including concern from some around its specific location within QEII Park,” Cr Johanson says.

After careful consideration, the hearings panel has recommended the sale proceed, but with conditions to address the issues raised. These include:

Ensuring that some land is retained to enable the adjacent Travis Medical Centre to continue using it for customer car parking.
Ensuring that some of the park’s memorial trees are protected in the development of the schools, by having an encumbrance registered against the title of the land.
Enabling a publicly-accessible walking track to be created that circles the entire park, covering the land owned by the Ministry and the land retained by the Council.
Allocating the proceeds from the land sale towards the development and implementation of a Masterplan for the entirety of QEII Park.

The final decision whether or not to sell is set to go before the full Council in June, along with the full hearings report.

If the proposal goes ahead, both schools will be sitting alongside the Council’s planned QEII Recreation and Sport Centre by 2018, with significant greenspace left over for recreation.

UPDATE: Further to this morning’s release, the hearings panel, by majority decision, approved a recommendation to the Council to sell a portion of QEII Park to the Ministry of Education. The hearings panel recommended that the memorial trees on the park be protected as a condition of the sale, and the Council is now able to present a map showing the locations of these trees.

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