Freyberg Place and Ellen Melville Centre Re-Open as Community Hub

Freyberg Place and Ellen Melville Centre have re-opened to the public in September 2017 after undergoing extensive refurbishment, resuming their role as a community hub for the High Street District.

The outdoor square and Ellen Melville Centre's indoor spaces were designed specifically to meet the needs of the ever-growing and changing population of residents, workers, visitors and groups in the area. 

Linking High Street to the O'Connell Street, Chancery Square and the Metropolis, Freyberg Place provides an open air public space for local workers, residents and vistors alike to relax and enjoying the sunshine. The design, developed by Isthmus Group with John Reynolds, incorporates terraced seating evoking lava flows, a cascading 'stream' water feature and native planting set around an open plaza for events. A statue of Lord Freyberg, New Zealand’s seventh governor-general overlooks the area.

You can book Ellen Melville Centre facilities for your meetings, private functions, exhibitions, films, concerts and performances, with five different spaces available. Classes and programmes are run by organisations including Splice and Plunket and a variety of urbanism, arts, culture and technology events are hosted. A flexible urban living room opens on to Freyberg Place. A new artwork by Lisa Reihana, Justice, can be seen on the wall facing into O'Connell Street, paying homage to the history of the building and its namesake.

_{Images: supplied by Ellen Melville Centre}