John MacDonald: What should happen to Christchurch's cathedral?

I am calling time on my support for the reinstatement of the Anglican cathedral in Cathedral Square. Because we now know that what we suspected is, in fact, true and the whole project is in financial strife and may be about to come to a complete standstill. 

The job is bigger than first thought and the project needs to find an extra $114 million - taking the overall cost to $248 million. 

And here’s the crucial bit. If the first $30 million of that $114 million can’t be found by September - five months from now - work will stop completely and the cathedral will be mothballed, indefinitely. 

If that isn’t bad enough, it seems the people running the project are still somewhat delusional. How do I know that? I’ll get to that shortly. 

But I should tell you first that, for me, this is another one of those “what good is a mind if you can’t change it” situations. And my confidence and support has gone. 

Because it was only about six weeks ago that I was saying that, if we really want to finish this reinstatement once-and-for-all, then more ratepayer money is going to be the only option. 

So far, $30 million of public money has gone into it. $10 million from ratepayers and $20 million from taxpayers. And six weeks ago, I said that more public money is needed because expecting people to donate money is just daft. And it’s not going to come from taxpayers. Which just leaves ratepayers. 

But I didn’t know six weeks ago that costs have gone through the roof and the project is now short of $114 million. That’s even with the church putting in another $16 million of its own money. 

So, let’s do some numbers. There are about 184,000 ratepayers in Christchurch. And if the extra $114 million was going to come from us, it would equate to around $700 each. More if the council borrowed the money and there was interest on top of that. 

I actually think $700-per-ratepayer doesn’t sound too bad when you consider how much of a handbrake the cathedral is on future development in and around Cathedral Square. 

That’s because the reinstatement work isn’t limited to the land the cathedral sits on. There’s a lot of space around the cathedral that can’t be used because it’s also needed for the reinstatement work. And this is stopping any other developments from happening. 

But, six weeks on, I’ve changed my mind. And the reason for that is that I’ve lost confidence. For a couple of reasons. 

First - and this is where we get to my point about the people behind the project being deluded. Despite announcing this $114 million funding hole and saying that, if $30 million of it can’t be raised in just four months, then the whole thing will be mothballed - despite all that, they’re still banging on about fundraising. 

Here’s what the Chair of the project, Mark Stewart said at the weekend. 

“We are confident we can raise a further $26 million of fundraising, on top of the $24 million raised so far.” 

Now they’ve done well raising $24 million, don’t get me wrong. But they’re dreaming, thinking they’re going to get another $26 million. Because, if it was do-able, it would have been done by now. 

Originally, they set out to raise $51 million by the end of last year. But they’re only around the halfway mark and that’s because people with truckloads of money don’t give it away for buildings anymore. Let alone a building that is a miniature copy of hundreds - if not thousands - of vastly more impressive cathedrals around the world. 

So, they need to give up on this pipedream that more fundraising is part of the answer. 

The other reason why the reinstatement project has lost my confidence, is what an economic