PROFILE
For Suzanne Price, Recovery Programme Manager for Church Property Trustees (CPT), a desire for heritage protection developed from an acute sense of loss. It was while on a drive through her hometown of Kaiapoi, outside Christchurch, after being away studying veterinary science at Massey University, that she noticed the old library was gone. “The council had demolished the library; my library. I’d virtually lived there as a child and I couldn’t believe that the beautiful triple-brick building wasn’t there anymore. I just cried.” Her next trip back to Christchurch was ruined as well. “I drove past St Bede’s College and was appalled to see the beautiful façade of St Bede’s had vanished. It had always made such an impression on me as I drove past. It was always there, and then one day it wasn’t.” Once again, she felt the loss of something beautiful and completely unrecoverable. The experiences had a huge impact on Suzanne, and when deteriorating hearing forced a move from veterinary school to property management and valuation, she was determined that any heritage
building that came her way would be given a chance. “Everyone looks at the economics of restoring old buildings, but it shouldn’t rule the decisions. No matter where you live, there will be heritage buildings that are important to your community and there is a huge sense of loss once they go, because you can’t get them back,” she says. In the mid-1980s, as one of only a handful of women in the property development and management industry, Suzanne became the first woman to join the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA), now the Property Council of New Zealand. She remembers the day she derailed a BOMA meeting that was being held at the Wellington Club. “Women weren’t allowed in, so they had to change the venue for future meetings.” The work was hard but the challenges exciting. She enjoyed the theory behind valuations and early on was given some internal fit-out projects to manage. “And suddenly, she who was never going to work in an office was really enjoying it,” she laughs. Suzanne’s early projects in Christchurch involved finding new office venues, fitting them out and then moving sales agents into their new, open-plan offices.
position
RECOVERY
With decades spent working in the property sector and a long-held love of heritage spaces, Suzanne Price had the right set of skills to lead one of Canterbury’s biggest earthquake recovery efforts
WO R DS : K I M T RIE G AARDT • IMAG E RY: KIRST E N S H E PPARD
12 Winter 2018
Heritage New Zealand
