Hagley Oval & Hadlee Pavilion

The Canterbury earthquakes took much of Christchurch's sport and community facilities, and the region had no central venue fit for international cricket, its grounds at New Brighton and Lincoln too far out and too exposed to the weather to draw a crowd. Being named a host city for the 2015 Cricket World Cup set the deadline to put that right, with a proper international ground in Hagley Park.

Canterbury Cricket Trust engaged RCP for project, design and event management, working alongside Christchurch City Council as co-owner and funder. RCP managed the delivery of the Hadlee Pavilion and the engineered grass embankment that gives the ground its spectator banking, and managed the temporary overlay that readied Hagley Oval for the tournament.

Hagley Park is protected public parkland, and the ground had to stay open to the public and keep hosting cricket right through construction. RCP programmed the work around live matches, including evening T20 games under temporary lights, and held the build to tough resource-consent conditions, work under tree driplines and sediment control, watched closely by a lobby group opposed to the development. The Cricket World Cup overlay had to go up inside a narrow consent window and through structural and fire-engineering constraints, and RCP managed it into place in time for the pre-tournament verification.

Between a council and a trust that did not always agree, RCP kept the stakeholders aligned and the ICC's tournament and integrity requirements in front of the team, and managed the design to a lean budget. The project opened with no compliance breaches and no serious safety incidents on site.

The Hadlee Pavilion opened in 2014, and Hagley Oval hosted the opening match and opening ceremony of the 2015 Cricket World Cup. It has been Christchurch's home of international cricket since, a ground that stays open to the public between matches and hosts conferences, functions and weddings through the year.

Awards

2015 Property Council New Zealand, Merit, Tourism and Leisure
2015 New Zealand Institute of Architects Canterbury, Public Architecture