Re:Start Container Mall

The beautiful country of New Zealand is split into two main islands, with the city of Christchurch serving as the major metropolitan area on the South Island. In the wake of a disastrous earthquake in 2011, the Re:Start Container Mall was created to help revitalize the city. Continue reading to find more about the origins of this shipping container retail center and its current status.

On February 22nd, 2011, Christchurch experienced a 6.2 earthquake that killed 185 people and damaged numerous buildings in the city center. The damage was so devastating that numerous buildings had to be demolished, taking out retailers and only further hampering economic recovery. By some accounts, almost 80% of shops and buildings in the heart of the city eventually had to be demolished.

A group of enterprising individuals and organizations proposed building a shipping container mall on the grounds of several razed buildings that previously served as the Cashel Street pedestrian mall. The idea was that containers would give a short-term way to quickly bring back small retailers to the area. As longtime readers of our website already know, shipping containers are a great way to quickly build durable, affordable, and flexible structures.

A non-profit group, ReStart the Heart Trust, secured an interest-free $3.36 million loan from the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal Trust. The loan proceeds were intended to fund the project’s construction, and the underlying land was made available for use rent-free. With the idea solidified and execution planned, construction soon started and was completed in only eight weeks!

By October 29th, 2011, the Re:Start Container Mall was opened with an estimated 10,000 people in attendance for the festivities. It quickly became an international icon of a city’s resilience, innovative construction, and fun pedestrian retail design. In fact, the development was featured in travel guides like Lonely Planet and even won an award from the New Zealand Institute of Architects in 2013. This publicity drove tourism, which further helped with the city’s recovery and attention from the international world.

Re:Start opened with 27 businesses, but eventually grew to over 50 as word spread about the container park. Most of the containers were stacked two high and spread across a large open area with numerous pedestrian avenues between buildings. The development also featured tension fabric shade canopies, outdoor sculptures, landscaping, and other features to make it feel more organic and friendly.

While the project was a resounding success, it was also intended to be a temporary, interim measure in the long-term plan of rebuilding Christchurch’s CBD. In December 2013, facing a lease expiration on part of the project, the organizers of Re:Start announced that the container park would be closing in the coming months.

But public outcry led plans to change, and a few months later the northern section of Re:Start was moved west down the street to a nearby property over a period of just 10 days. The relocated section was opened to the public on June 13th, 2014. This allowed the container mall to continue operating while also opening up the northern land area for the kickoff of previously planned construction work. 

Still, the temporary nature of Re:Start was always there, and everyone knew the project had a finite life span. On April 30th, 2017, the Re:Start container park officially closed, bringing an end to the multi-year experiment in shipping container architecture.

In its place, developers started working on Riverside Market, a permanent building with a 7-days a week farmer’s market and retail that maintains some of the spirit that Re:Start brought to the site. The containers themselves were sold off to various entities, with some remaining nearby in the CBD for a continuation of previous tenant businesses. 

A few of the containers found their way up the South Island coast to Kaikoura, a town recovering from its own earthquake in 2016. There is a smaller version of Re:Start called UpLift Kaikoura that was attempted to replicate the success seen in Christchurch.

The success of the Re:Start container project was really a success for shipping container retail development everywhere. Its popularity demonstrated how these novel retail developments could be economically successful while having an appearance that gained positive attention.

While there have been a number of container parks built before and since, Re:Start is one of the most well-known. And despite early threats of legal action from another container park, the project was pretty much universally lauded by both New Zealanders and visitors.