McKenzie and a former chairman of the trust that ran the Hato Petera boarding hostel, Terry Dunleavy, have proposed bringing Anglican as well as Catholic Māori students on to the Northcote site to create a more viable joint school.
The Anglican Church closed its Māori boarding schools St Stephen's, a boys' school at Bombay, and Queen Victoria, a girls' school in Parnell, in 2000 and 2001.
Both sites are still owned by the St Stephen's and Queen Victoria (SSQV) Schools Trust Board with assets valued last September at $72.1m. The Parnell site alone at 27 Glanville Terrace is valued at $50m and is being used as an early childhood centre, but at only 1.4ha it lacks Hato Petera's expansive playing fields.
SSQV board chairman Bernard Te Paa said he and Dunleavy would meet soon to discuss whether a joint Anglican and Catholic Māori boarding school would be viable.
Te Paa, a St Stephen's old boy, sent his own sons to Hato Petera after St Stephen's closed, and said: "Anything is possible in this new age."
"The question is going to be around the will of the various parties to be able to work together," he said.
He said his board had been working towards opening a coeducational Anglican Māori boarding school in Auckland in 2020, and was open to making it a joint school with the Catholics at Northcote.
"The good thing with the Northcote site is it's a pretty central site, in an urban area, but it also has its negatives in terms of lack of privacy," he said.
Te Paa said a new boarding school would need at least 350 students to be viable.
McKenzie said a joint Catholic and Anglican school could attract 500 Māori students.
Ngāti Paoa Iwi chairman Gary Thompson, a former Hato Petera house parent whose iwi sold the land to Governor George Grey before Grey gave it to the Church, said he supported a dual-denominational Māori school.
Vanguard, a charter school for Years 11 to 13 now based at Albany, is also believed to have talked to the church about moving to the Northcote site. Hipkins approved its expansion to a full Years 9 to 13 state secondary school in May and said it would need a new site.
Vanguard chief executive Nick Hyde said the school would stay on its present site in 2019 and decisions on its future site would be made by the Ministry of Education.
AUT declined to comment on its potential interest in the site and the Catholic Church said no decisions would be made until Hipkins decided to close the existing college.
Hipkins said Hato Petera commissioner Lex Hamill had reported back on an interim decision to cancel the college's integration agreement, but he was waiting for more information from the ministry this week.
"After considering all information, I will make a final decision on the possible cancellation of the integration agreement."
