Linwood Park getting its sports fields back

With Linwood Park’s temporary housing now gone, Christchurch City Council is gearing up to convert the village area back to a sports field.

Built in 2011 to provide a temporary home for Christchurch residents who were left without accommodation while their earthquake-damaged homes were being repaired or rebuilt, the 43 temporary accommodation units were removed from Linwood Park in September 2020.

“Although the units themselves are all gone, Linwood Park has been left with the remnants of the village – roads, pavements, street lighting, fences, clotheslines, and underground pipes and cables,” says Andrew Rutledge, Head of Parks.

“We’re currently designing how Linwood Park will look once these traces have been tidied up, and we’re keeping the best long-term solution for the park in mind.

“Most of the remaining infrastructure needs to be removed, but some of it will remain buried underground, and we’ll recycle as much of the temporary road material as possible.”

Design work will be completed in early 2022. The sports field is expected to be completed in spring 2022, and the area should be fully reopened to the public in early 2023. The remediation work will restore the area to its original condition as a sports field for community use.

Built by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, the Linwood Park properties were never intended to be a permanent fixture at the park. The Ministry sold them to Christchurch City Council, who subsequently gifted them to Ōtautahi Community Housing Trust (ŌCHT) in 2017 as part of a transfer of capital.

The Christchurch Methodist Mission bought 16 of the homes for use as social housing, and the remaining homes were relocated to other ŌCHT sites.