Plagued with problems — legal disputes, difficult ground conditions, budget blowouts, a redesign to reduce costs — the project got under way in 2018. Then Covid-19 hit. Now, more than 14 years after the quakes, another anchor finally grabs hold on this shaky ground. At 32,000sqm and costing $500 million — more than double its original estimate — the centre is huge, the largest facility of its kind in New Zealand.

From the outside, Parakiore is two long, rectangular, single-pitch, factory-like sheds — one for the wet, one for the dry, one dark, the other white — placed side by side. Each shed has a high end and a low end, in counterpoint to the other, and they are separated by a central circulation spine and entrance atrium.

Inside is a confluence of sport and recreation — a marvel of equipment, apparatus and boundary lines for bodies in motion. That includes nine fullsize ‘community’ courts marked up for basketball, netball, volleyball, korfball, futsal, floorball, handball and badminton. Three of the courts can be transformed with retractable seating into a 2500-seat ‘show court’ for audiences of competition netball or basketball. As well as fitness and movement spaces brimming with all manner of gym machinery, there is also the Move centre, a three-room studio for dance, dive-acrobatics and circo-arts, plus a High Performance Sport New Zealand training base.

In the wet shed is a 10-lane, 50m competition swimming pool with seating for 1000 spectators. It also has a 20x25m diving pool with four platforms that climb up to 10m high. For diving practice, there are rigs either side of the 10m platform to suspend divers in the air, plus a ‘dry’ diving area with a foam pit. Then there’s the large aquatic leisure zone with five ‘eel inspired’ hydroslides, including the trapdoor Looping Rocket, which sends riders downwards at around 40 kilometres per hour. There’s also the Aquatic Sensory Experience, designed to foster exploration and play for individuals with sensory or disability needs.

If all this sounds a little over the top, that’s because it probably is. The idea behind projects such as Parakiore is to create the foundations of the new city: the new cathedrals of gathering that will bring the city together. Build it and they will come.

Another anchor due to open in April is Te Kaha, aka One New Zealand Stadium under a naming rights sponsorship deal, Christchurch’s long-awaited $683-million stadium. The huge, multi-use, covered arena, glistening white with what seems like too much steel, imposes quite a visual force on the new compact city skyline. It has capacity for 30,000 people at sports events and 36,000 at large music events.

Add to that the $475-million Te Pae Christchurch Convention Centre opened in 2022, with 28,000sqm of highly flexible event space, and it would seem that Christchurch is well and truly anchored as a city humming with events and activity.

All three venues are also designed as money-making machines. Parakiore is expected to draw a variety of events, such as the national swimming championships, secondary school tournaments and World Masters events, with visitors injecting millions of dollars into the city.

“They’re going to have two million visitors a year going through that place,” Annabel Turley, chairperson of the Central City Business Association told The Press in September last year. “It’s going to have more economic impact, probably, than the stadium.”

Similarly, Te Kaha has a detailed feasibility study underpinning its $683m cost. Modelling projects that a single All Blacks test would be worth about $7m to Christchurch, while a major international concert could deliver between $10m and $15m in local spending.

But, before getting too carried away with such optimism, it’s worth noting what’s happening at Te Pae. In 2024/25, the conference centre hosted 210 events, down from 224 in 2023/24 and 261 in 2022/23. Visitor numbers have slipped from about 130,000 in 2022/23 to a little over 80,000 in 2024/25, according to its latest annual report.

As The Press pointed out in November, revenue has followed the same trend. Te Pae earned $15.6m in 2024/25, its lowest result in three years and about $1.8m short of budget. The centre reported a total owner and operating loss of about $3.4m, narrowly breaching the Crown’s key performance threshold of $3.3m.

That multi-million shortfall is currently being met by taxpayers, as Te Pae is owned by the Government via Crown Infrastructure Delivery (CID) and run by ASM Global under a longterm operating contract. On the plus side, the convention centre is generating positive economic impact through visitor spend in the city, with analysis by Infometrics showing convention visitors from outside the region spend about $496 a day while they are in Canterbury.

But while the immediate future for Christchurch’s new anchor projects undoubtedly looks promising, the Te Pae warning demonstrates that increased competition from other New Zealand cities can make such foundations precarious. And it raises questions of how such cathedrals of gathering, designed with unshakable optimism as anchors to a new city, might negotaite volatile times to avoid becoming monumental white elephants.