24 March 2005

Christchurch City Council to mark chamber renovation on 30 March

Christchurch Mayor Garry Moore has invited a group of people from throughout the city and surrounding areas to an official opening next week of the refurbished council chambers.

The public space on the ground floor of the Council’s Civic Offices at 163 Tuam Street have been substantially remodelled in recent months and Mr Moore says the event, at 5pm on Wednesday 30 March, is being organised to give public recognition to the room’s role in the life of the city.

“In the last year or so, there’s been lots of change around the Christchurch City Council,” Mr Moore says. “Among the most important changes is that today we’ve got a smaller group of councillors working under a new law which puts much greater emphasis on connecting council business to community need.

“The modernising of this space, literally opening it up and lightening it, is a symbol of these wider changes and I wanted to invite representatives from a range of the city’s communities and interest groups and from surrounding areas. We’re saying this place is the primary space where the Council and community connect and we welcome the city inside.

“I think it’s a good job,” he says. “We have a space which is much more user-friendly than before. It’s already been much more heavily used both by groups from within the Council and by people from the community coming in and engaging with each other and with the Council. That’s important because there’s not a lot of available space in this old building.”

ENDS

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