City Mall is the main pedestrian mall in the central city of Christchurch, New Zealand, comprising two sections of Cashel Street plus the Bridge of Remembrance and one section of High Street. It is also known colloquially as Cashel Mall. The Bridge of Remembrance was pedestrianised in 1976. The main mall was closed to traffic on 11 January 1982 and formally reopened as a pedestrian mall on 7 August, but it was not until 1992 that the entire mall was paved. The mall was redeveloped between 2006 and 2009, and track was installed for an expansion of the heritage tram network.
The September 2010 Canterbury earthquake caused damage to some buildings, but the Boxing Day aftershock, directly underneath the city, caused even more damage, including building failures. The 6.3 magnitude February 2011 Christchurch earthquake devastated the mall; the façades of many buildings collapsed and there were several fatalities. The centre of the city was subsequently closed to allow demolition work to proceed. Structures affected included most of the heritage buildings in the mall that are or were registered by Heritage New Zealand. Part of City Mall, the section of Cashel Street from Oxford Terrace to Colombo Street, was the first part of the central city to open again, on Saturday, 29 October 2011, marked by a ceremony at which the Prime Minister John Key officiated.
Urban context
City Mall is made up of Cashel Street between Cambridge Terrace up to its intersection with High Street and High Street from Cashel Street to its intersection with Hereford and Colombo Streets.
Cashel Street runs east-west. The portion of Cashel Street that makes up City Mall is approximately long. The street is named after the bishopric of Cashel. At the time of naming by surveyor Edward Jollie and Joseph Thomas, the bishop was Robert Daly, an uncle of John Robert Godley, who is considered to be the founder of Canterbury.
High Street is one of the two diagonal streets in the central city, running from north-west to south-east. The portion of High Street that makes up City Mall is approximately long. It was initially called Sumner Road, as it connected to the village (and later suburb) of Sumner. It was renamed Lower High Street, and then just High Street, probably after The High in Oxford.
History
The first traffic lights in the South Island were installed at the intersection of Cashel and Colombo Streets. The traffic lights, which were first tested on the evening of 5 November 1930, replaced officers on point duty.
The Canterbury/Westland Branch of the New Zealand Institute of Valuers began biannual pedestrian counts in central Christchurch in 1957. The count takes place one hour in the morning and afternoon, respectively (10:30h to 11:30h and 14:30h to 15:30h). While dozens of sites are counted, only seven of the locations have been included in the count since the work began in the 1950s. There is a gradual but steady decline visible in pedestrian numbers. The seven sites had 30,000 pedestrians in 1957, and that had reduced to 18,000 by the 1981 count. The establishment of City Mall saw the numbers increase to 25,000 again, but the overall downward trend continued after that, albeit starting at the higher level of the 1983 count.
Original scheme
The concept of a pedestrian mall in Cashel and High Streets was first developed in the 1965 central city redevelopment study. In the same year, there were proposals in Wellington to form a pedestrian mall in Cuba Street. The Christchurch concept was included in the 1968 District Scheme (a predecessor of the Christchurch City Plan). A year later, Cuba Mall was established in Wellington, the success of which gave other cities the confidence to advance their plans for pedestrianising streets. In 1976, the Bridge of Remembrance was closed to traffic, reserving the short Cashel Street link between Oxford and Cambridge Terraces over the Avon River for pedestrians. The plans for City Mall were confirmed in the 1979 review of the District Scheme. A concept design by the City Architect was adopted by Christchurch City Council, the Cashel Street Businessmen's Association and the High Street Businessmen's Association in 1981.
On 11 January 1982, the sections of Cashel and High Street that form the mall were closed to traffic. Mayor Hamish Hay opened the NZ$0.5m City Mall project on 7 August 1982. It took ten years and three separate project stages before the whole area was paved; tree planters and additional seating were installed as part of the final project stage in the early 1990s. Mayor Vicki Buck opened the third and final stage on 4 December 1992.