According to the lease agreement between the St Paul’s Tennis Club (an organisation independent of the church) and Church Property Trustees, the tennis club was responsible for moving the clubrooms at the end of the lease.

After the Parish gave notice to end the lease, it allowed the tennis club to renew the lease for short periods, until the tennis club decided to close. The tennis club then offered the Parish the clubrooms free of charge. Vestry decided not to accept the clubrooms as it felt it might be more costly to remove the building than it would be worth. Vestry did, however, allow the tennis club some time to remove the clubrooms and agreed that use of the building would be shared. The Youth Centre then used the clubrooms for storage and the Pickleball Club as their base.

The tennis club gifted the clubrooms to the Kaiapoi Croquet Club. This club fundraised money for the move. Initially, the croquet club planned to lift the clubrooms with a crane over the lounge. But when we sat down together we came up with a better option: knocking down the fence, moving the building through the RSA car park and then to the road. The RSA gave its agreement to that scheme.

It was over a year later until the move finally happened. The croquet club prepared the building for its move from April 2025 onwards, holding several working bees. Because I was away from that time, Hank van Til took over cooperation for the move on behalf of the Parish. This also included arranging the removal of some bushes, small trees and large branches to enable the machinery to reach the clubrooms. In early June the building was lifted on a truck and moved to the RSA car park. The following night it was moved to Kaiapoi by road.

The house moving company arranged to have the fence to the RSA car park rebuilt. There was still some rubbish to be removed. Thank you to Hank and Ainslie for working on that.

The removal of the clubrooms was just in time. The Parish had contracted surveyors to adjust the boundaries of the property, so that it could be sold more easily. The old boundaries ran through the Youth Centre and several graves. The surveyors submitted the subdivision consent to the Christchurch City Council. The council would only grant the consent if the building on the property were removed. We could immediately reply that the building had already been removed a few days ago. In that way the consent for the boundary adjustment could be quickly issued.

Recently the Church Property Trustees lawyer has reviewed all easements and covenants on the property and found an irregularity that the surveyors had not accounted for. This may require some more work, before the property is put up for sale. The boundary adjustment has now been lodged with Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) and should be confirmed in approximately a month. Even though Vestry did seek alternative surveying proposals and in that way brought down the cost from approximately $60,000 to $15,000, this further step in preparing the property for sale has affected Parish finances. We do hope that it can be recouped in a sale. Currently the Christchurch Methodist Mission is not in a position to buy the land. We may, therefore, go to the open market again late