No other big New Zealand city lately has been beset by such catastrophe, then such chance and opportunity.
The earthquakes created a heartbreakingly blank seismic canvas for property transformation, yet also allowed our second largest city to become more Ōtautahi, less Christ Church.
Investors are rebuilding with insurance or buyout payments and rivers of Government cash have poured into the city lately, sparking our most exciting large-scale construction environment.
In Auckland, SkyCity Entertainment Group is spending $700m, and insurers $336m, on that city's long-awaited fire-hit convention centre.
Yet the southern capital's new $475m Te Pae Convention Centre near Cathedral Square was paid for by the state.
John Walsh, formerly of the Institute of Architects, cites Christchurch's new library Tūranga, 60 Cathedral Square (Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects and Matapopore Trust, 2018) as an outstanding new development.
He wrote in Christchurch Architecture - A Walking Guide (Massey Press) that is it "a milestone in the evolution of biculturalism in a city in which Anglocentrism has at times blurred into racial chauvinism".
For Walsh, a better city is most certainly emerging.
Developers are showing audacity, talent and flair to reinvent this Four Avenues hub, rejecting fussy olde world Englishness, moving more towards te ao Māori and, he hoped, more cosmopolitan architecture - although somewhat disappointingly, that was only prominent via the Danish library designers and Japan's Shigeru Ban on the cardboard cathedral, he noted.
So who are a few of these new, pioneering southern developers and builders? Who are those creating this new city amidst the old, residential estates from the city centre to Rolleston, eschewing the gothic for the go-ahead, the Anglican for agnostic aesthetics?
This list is in no particular order and certainly does not aim to chronicle the most or least valuable or powerful from the top down. It in no way purports to be comprehensive or name every big Christchurch developer or builder.
It aims only to give a taste of some key Down South influencers.
Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu Group clocked $1.71b net assets in the 2020/21 year. Whānau numbered 71,434, group return on net assets was a spectacular 11.1 per cent and 24 per cent of Te Rūnanga Group staff were Ngāi Tahu.
The company has grown in the last two decades to become one of the city's biggest developers and its investment portfolio has prime real estate including Crown-tenanted Christchurch, Dunedin and Queenstown buildings.
It is a major commercial and residential developer and investor.
For example, the Christchurch Civic Building Te Hononga is a Ngāi Tahu Property- Christchurch City Council public-private partnership. Ngāi Tahu Property redeveloped the ex-NZ Post mail centre in Hereford St, kept half and manages it for the partnership. Around 1200 council staff work in the six Green Star-rated 23,000sq m building.
Ngāi Tahu Holdings posted a net profit of $240m, its largest yet, and extraordinary considering the dire pandemic forecasts. Ngāi Tahu Property declared total assets of $743m and posted a 14.7 per cent total return which included revaluations.
Its new Queenstown residential master-planned 300-home development Te Pā Tāhuna is underway with KiwiBuild homes on the ex-Whakatipu high School site: 27 apartments in its first phase are due to be finished by December.
An agreement has also been struck with ACC for a new 8000sq m Dunedin office block, leased to ACC and owned jointly.
Richard Peebles, Mike Percasky and Kris Ingles are the men behind the SALT (St Asaph, Lichfield and Tuam streets) district with its Little High Eatery, and the visionary Riverside Market and Riverside Lanes.
The Property Council honoured them two years ago, saying when it became clear overseas investors weren't swooping on the city and rescuing it, they put their own funds into local projects.
The 3500sq m Riverside Markets won the Property Council's 2020 retail property award as "more than a retail centre, it is a place for the community to gather, connecting the adjacent streets and creating a bustling, village-like vibe that feels homely and welcoming".
The roaring success reactivated and energised the CBD. Since opening in October 2019, foot traffic in the central city jumped more than 30 per cent, with neighbouring retailers saying their turnover was up 20 per cent or more, the council noted. The projects have successfully attracted more people to the city, giving them another reason to stay, shop, dine or simply wander.
"True pioneers, the Peebles, Percasky, Ingles partnership have been instrumental in reshaping the central city and rebranding Christchurch as a place people want to be," the Property Council said.
Ryman Healthcare is New Zealand's biggest listed retirement owner/operator, headquartered on Russley Rd, a proud Mainland business.
As one of this country's biggest developers building thousands of new villas, apartments and hospital beds, it was founded in Christchurch in 1984 by John Ryder and Kevin Hickman. Its first village was Rowena Jackson in Invercargill.
From Russley, Ryman runs Australasian operations housing 12,000 residents and employing around 6000 staff, of whom 1200 are employed in Christchurch alone. Much of its work is in Victoria, where it's spending billions.
Diana Isaac in Mairehau is one of its largest villages but it also has Essie Summers in Beckenham, Margaret Stoddart at Riccarton, Ngaio Marsh at Papanui, Anthony Wilding in Halswell and Charles Upham at Rangiora.
Ryman has just started work on a new village at Northwood and has sites at Park Terrace and Rolleston, planning to spend a further half-billion dollars in the Christchurch region. It has already spent $2.5b in Australia.
Anthony Leighs' Leighs Construction is one of New Zealand's largest privately-owned builders, founded in Christchurch, although he now splits his time between Auckland's waterfront and the south. Not so much a developer - although he's moving more into that - he has a national building business.
He picked Timaru's PrimePort for preconstruction of the $344m Scott Base rebuild in Antarctica. Other Christchurch projects which the proudly southern Leighs has completed are Cashmere High School's redevelopment, Hornby High and Primary schools (delivered over a 30-month programme), Hillmorton High School redevelopment and the new Farmers Mutual Group offices.
Leighs founded the business in 1995, is a former Registered Master Builders chairman and, in 2018, joined Ryman's board.
Mainlanders: they stick together.
Williams Corporation is a specialist apartment/townhouse developer founded in 2012 in Christchurch by sub-30-year-olds Blair William Chappell and Matthew William Horncastle. It has now more recently spread to Australia and Asia, opening many new offices.
Where some just saw gravelled carparking chances on building graveyards, these two saw a new urban form: compact, affordable, above code and appealing to a younger audience which doesn't demand garages, gardens or the grandiose.
Their formula has been so successful that they've spread nationally, then overseas. They have taken the industry by storm, becoming New Zealand's second-busiest residential builder/developer behind the powerhouse 25-year-old G.J. Gardner.
To say Williams has its critics would be an understatement: they've upset the older order. They raised about $140m from investors and recently formed their first syndicate. They're big on social media daily: their launch the WW cruises the Hauraki Gulf, the private charter jets are regular and the zero-alcohol flows freely.
Naylor Love headed by Rick Herd is a big force, having won the Christ Church Cathedral reinstatement project, taking seven to 10 years to complete. But the builder also fixed other heritage landmarks: Christ's College and the Isaac Theatre Royal, via strengthening and refurbishment.
The Canterbury team built the Transitional Cathedral, a world-first temporary structure with massive cardboard tube rafters.
Antony Gough developed the riverside hospitality hub The Terrace, which was transformative in reigniting the city centre on the banks of the Ōtākaro/Avon River. The Property Council featured him in its We Built This City series, saying he was a major "owner and investor pre-quakes, with a family legacy that dates back generations and a property portfolio that grew from a single purchase at age 21".
He got a Canterbury University science degree in 1970 with honours in nuclear science and was awarded an honorary doctorate in commerce in 2014. He's been a computer programmer, a sheep farmer in Chertsey and even a hospitality proprietor. "Not your typical route to property, but then again, Antony is anything but typical," the council noted.
Carter Group is one of the city's busiest developers and a privately held, family-owned, Canterbury-based company established in 1946. Philip and Tim Carter are family members.
Their 18ha Rolleston project The Station is planned to be the South Island's largest non-enclosed retail centre.
That is part of the bigger 122ha $500m IPort business park.
Soon, Carter Group could bring Costco to the South Island. Its Rolleston Industrial Holdings won Selwyn District Council resource consent for a large format membership-only warehouse there.
Nick Hunt of Lichfield Holdings showed strong post-quake confidence early in developing the $140m BNZ Centre on Cashel Mall.
This stylish large steel-framed development is an anchor in the CBD. The commercial confidence behind its size and design remains inspirational and a marker. Stylish shops and laneways draw many to its heart.
Institute of Architects judges, in awarding the project's designers in 2017, said: "Bridging Cashel and Hereford Streets, the unapologetically large retail and office development covers half a city block. It is dissected by multiple laneways and arcades connecting to the surrounding streets and neighbouring developments, all coming together to meet at a generously scaled internal public courtyard."
Tim Glasson of Hallenstein Glassons is a major national property investor but also a proud Mainlander. So it was no accident he was a big investor behind the $80m rebuild of the Hallenstein Glasson stores in Christchurch.
He was named in local Canterbury media along with two others as pumping nearly half a billion dollars into a retail/banking area around Ballantynes department store. Antony Gough and Nick Hunt were the other two.
• Ballantynes is not a developer or builder. But it must also be acknowledged here as a stable anchor in the centre of town, continuing to offer luxury goods amidst the chaos, its commitment and ongoing quality drawing people to the city's heart - despite suburbanisation.
Peddle Thorp worked with Ballantynes to design a new building for its Lichfield St frontage. Ballantynes lost two adjoining buildings and 2550sq m of trading space in the February 2011 earthquake, and the development replaced two temporary structures erected post-quake. In March, this was one of 50 Canterbury projects shortlisted for a local area award.
Auckland crane numbers fell to an eight-year low.