A Christchurch city councillor wants the council to install a winter ice skating rink in the middle of Cathedral Square, arguing that new pavers and planter boxes alone will never coax people back into the city’s old civic heart while the earthquake-damaged Christ Church Cathedral remains fenced off as a working construction site.
The pitch from councillor Aaron Keown has emerged as the council shortlists five groups to submit detailed proposals for the long-running redesign of the square. The eventual winner will be handed a council budget of 28.5 million dollars to draw up a concept plan, the final stage in a process that has ground on through demolition, deconsolidation and the slow restoration funding fight over the cathedral itself.
Keown told RNZ the square needed an attraction that could do the heavy lifting through the coldest months of the year. “For me, the square is the centre of town and you want to bring people in,” he said. “An ice rink would mean that, right when it is usually at its quietest, it would be the busiest.” He also floated the idea of using the venue to host an annual figure skating event, with the surviving heritage buildings around the square lit up against the dark winter evenings.
Under his proposal the council would cover set-up costs while hire fees from skaters would fund the three months of operation, broadly the model used by mid-sized outdoor rinks overseas. Fellow councillor Nathaniel Herz Jardine put the set-up bill at around 200,000 dollars, a number he described as achievable compared with the large architectural plans the council is being asked to consider.
“What we need the most, more than big expensive architectural plans, is something to re-activate the square, to get people back in the area,” Herz Jardine said. “One of the big gaps we have in the city is something affordable for young people and families, something people can do when the city can feel pretty quiet, between 3-5pm weekdays or on weekends.”
The proposal is not entirely without precedent. A 375 square metre rink operated by Ice World New Zealand ran near the old post office building during the 2017 KidsFest school holidays, with the company expecting around 10,000 visits across the short season. Central ward councillor Jake McLellan, whose ward would host the new rink, said he was open to the idea and noted the city had successfully trialled a temporary rink for a couple of winters before. “We have had a temporary ice rink, it was something we put up for a couple of years over winter, so yeah, happy to look at it,” McLellan said.
Mayor Phil Mauger was not available for comment.
The push to add something concrete and immediate to Cathedral Square sits against the backdrop of Christchurch’s longest-running building saga. Christ Church Cathedral remains fenced off behind site hoardings, with the public denied access for more than 14 years after the February 2011 earthquake first cracked the building open. The reinstatement project was mothballed in 2024 when costs blew out to 248 million dollars. Revised numbers have since brought the figure down to about 219 million, but a 40 to 45 million dollar funding shortfall has stubbornly refused to close.
On Tuesday councillors will decide whether to allocate 15 million dollars from a recent council surplus toward the cathedral, on the condition that central government also contributes 15 million. The cathedral attracted only 14 percent public support in the council’s most recent consultation round, a result that Mauger and others have been carefully navigating. In March, 1News reported that NZ First leader Winston Peters had pledged a further 15 million dollar contribution if his party formed part of the next government, a coalition lever that has shifted some of the political weight around the funding gap.
Whatever happens with the cathedral, the bigger redesign of the square itself is now firmly in motion. The shortlisted five groups will work up competing visions for the open space around the cathedral over the coming months, with the chosen scheme then unlocking the 28.5 million dollar concept budget. Keown is essentially arguing that the council should not wait for the long architectural process to play out before doing something tangible. An outdoor rink, he says, could be installed and removed each winter while the bigger plans take shape, providing a reason to walk into the square rather than skirt around it.
For a city that has spent years of consultation and several hundred million dollars trying to restore the symbolic heart of its post-quake recovery, the appeal of something as simple as a sheet of ice with skate hire and warm drinks is easy to understand. It also fits a pattern emerging in other Christchurch debates this winter, with the council looking at smaller, faster activations alongside the slower restoration of heritage buildings. Local business groups have been calling for more reasons to visit the central city after dark in the colder months, and family-friendly options in particular.
Staff will report back to councillors on the ice rink suggestion in coming weeks. If supported, set-up could in principle happen for the 2027 winter season, although timing will depend on procurement, public safety sign-off and confirmation that the temporary structure can sit alongside the wider redesign work without getting in its way.
Have you skated at a winter outdoor rink in Christchurch or anywhere else, and would you take your family to one set up in Cathedral Square? Tell us what you think in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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