n 1998 the New Brighton Residents Association was a very active group with a strong membership and dedicated committee, heavily involved in getting the central area off the canvas and humming again.
One of the popular means of communication was its monthly newsletter, and that was the main means of getting news to and from the locals.
Jean Bagrie, Karen Kendrick, Shelley Hill and Basil Kemp were responsible for putting this together and it was known as the ‘The NEWBRIGHTON BUZZ’ and issue three is presented below.
Facebook was still about six years away and we were watching Hawaii Five O and the Avengers on television when those first newsletters were printed.
In New Brighton there were two significant events as the central retail space continued to decline.
The first was the 1997 completion of the construction of a new 300 metre pier. This took the City Council 18 months to complete at a cost of about $4 million, half coming from a huge community effort over many years of fundraising, including 30 years of chocolate wheel spinning by the team featured below.
The Council then realised it needed a terminus building to complete the development linking pier and foreshore, and in early 1998 the architects designed a building to have the ambience of a great ocean liner anchored alongside Marine Parade.
There was some opposition with a few claiming it would be a lame duck and imposition on ratepayers.
Incredibly it only took 8 months to build. In the first five weeks over 100,000 people passed through the doors.
Foot traffic at the New Brighton Library continues to be high with 360,000 visitors per annum. These figures are by far the highest foot count of any community library in Christchurch and is popular in the weekends, especially with tourists.
The New Brighton Library project was to provide an icon and a focal point to draw people back and aid in its commercial hub revitalisation. However, design issues such as the poor connection between the Mall and the foreshore have not allowed the building to function to its full potential.
Below there is a random selection of photos with text from the Coastal 1990s era…