The changing face of Christchurch

The east side of Montreal Street has changed a lot since the early 1970s when carpenter Harry Gavin used to park his old Vauxhall outside his inner-city flat. Harry’s changed a bit since then too. These days he is back on his old patch as part of the C Lund and Son Contractors’ crew building the city’s new art gallery. “There was a car dealership behind our flat and a Girls High tennis court over there on the Gloucester Street corner,” he says. “The tennis court tarmac was still there right up until about a month ago when we got working in that corner. They’d been parking cars on it for all those years.” Like Harry, many of the Lund workers on the gallery site are originally from Timaru. He says they are a tightknit family. “It’s the best crew I’ve ever worked with,” Harry says. “They’re a good bunch of blokes and the management looks after us well. This has been a good job, not bad at all.”

On the spot: In the early 70s Harry Gavin lived in the place where he’s working today.

Christchurch Art Gallery Fact File

Building the gallery is taking:

• 64,000m of electrical cable
• 1.3 million kg of reinforcing
• 27,300 tonnes of concrete
• 11,600 sq m of ducting
• About 3000 truck trips were
needed to cart away 30,000 cubic metres of material excavated from the site
• The sculpture wall has about 2200 panes of glass
• 800 electrical power points
• 3900 light fittings
• 1700m of lighting track
• 2200 sq m of timber flooring
• 1400 sq m of carpet
• 2500 sq m of vinyl flooring
• 3400 sq m of granite paving
(inside and out)

The new gallery (15,722 sq m) complex will be six times bigger than the Robert McDougall Art Gallery (2289sq m). The project is on track to open in April next year.