The spire fell on 22 February 2011. The rose window and west wall followed later that year. It took until 2017 to settle whether the building would come down or go back up.
Christ Church Cathedral Reinstatement Limited has now re-scoped the rebuild into stages so the cathedral can open before the whole scheme is paid for. Stage one reinstates the nave and tower plus the western wall including the rose window, giving a working cathedral seating 700.
Project Scope
The Category 1 listed building was built 1864-1904 to a George Gilbert Scott design, with Benjamin Mountfort supervising construction on the ground. The 63-metre spire collapsed in the February 2011 earthquake, with further collapse in June and December.
A decade of argument over demolition versus restoration ended with the Christ Church Cathedral Reinstatement Act 2017. Naylor Love Canterbury delivered the stabilisation and strengthening work under an early contractor involvement arrangement and is the main contractor for reinstatement. Digital capture and BIM have carried the record of salvaged fabric and where each piece goes back.
In April 2024 the project announced a shortfall of about 114 million dollars and warned it would be mothballed. The Re:Opening plan unveiled in September 2025 roughly halved that. About 90 million has been spent, with 40 to 45 million still to find. A special meeting of the Christchurch Anglican Diocesan Synod committed a further 20 million in March 2026, and on 27 March 2026 NZ First leader Winston Peters announced a campaign commitment of another 15 million, which is a pledge rather than secured money.
Figures on this project have moved repeatedly. The earlier full-scheme number near 248 million and the 2024 shortfall are both superseded by the staged plan.
Why It Matters
The engineering story is stone and steel in a high-seismic zone, but the project management story is the one worth reading. A stalled heritage rebuild with an unfundable total got broken into pieces that each deliver a usable building, which changes the fundraising problem from one impossible ask into a sequence of achievable ones.
Nothing about the masonry got easier. The money did.
Project Team & Details
| Developer | Christ Church Cathedral Reinstatement Limited (CCRL) |
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| Owner / Client | Church Property Trustees, Anglican Diocese of Christchurch |
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| General Contractor | Naylor Love Canterbury |
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| Status | Under Construction |
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| Funding Source | Mixed |
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