Carlin composes plans for luxury Queenstown hotel

Monday, 26 June 2017

The outlook from the planned Queenstown Views hotel to be developed by Kevin Carlin by April 2019, with the existing Sofitel in the left of the picture.

Piano-playing composer and property developer Kevin Carlin is back in Queenstown with plans for a $100 million upmarket hotel in the centre of town.

It will be built in Brecon St leading up to the Skyline Gondola and its big point of difference will be a glass enclosed rooftop restaurant with lake and mountain views featuring Asian and New Zealand cuisine.

An artist's impression of a new hotel development by Kevin Carlin called Queenstown Views.

With a brace of Christchurch, Queenstown and recent Gold Coast developments under his belt, Carlin said he had returned on a ski trip last year and was astounded at the tourist town's growth.

'Australia is heading into a bubble and I don't want to be part of it.'

* Queenstown has 'critical shortage' of hotel rooms, report says**

To obtain the properties for the hotel he had to door knock and persuade four homeowners to sell.

In the 1990s Carlin developed Queenstown's The Waterfront apartments, and Lakeside Estates subdivision.

He is also well known in Christchurch circles for Styx Mill Country Club and Riverside Reserve, extensions of the upmarket Northwood subdivision developed in the early 2000s.

The US emigre has been active in real estate via Ultra Properties for the past 10 years mostly on the Gold Coast, Australia.

'When I came to Queenstown in 1991 there were 8000 people there. Now there's 38,000 and two million tourists each year. I didn't see that coming or I might have stayed.

He moved to Christchurch in the late nineties for his childrens' education.

When living in Christchurch until about 2005, Carline, now 62, held concerts featuring musical scores he composed - one of them a tribute Princess Diana - and released a CD in collaboration with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

'Music was a chapter in my life. I see property development and music as equally creative. I'm not particularly smart but one skill I have is time management.

'I have more friends and contacts in New Zealand so it's easier for me to develop in Queenstown.'

His first children are now 23 and 25 but Carlin has a new family with children aged six and 11.

Carlin described his rags to riches background in the United States, spending his teens in a tent before upgrading to a caravan, graduating as a chef, running a restaurant, and setting up mobile food outlets and supplying rock stars on tour.

His big break came with a US army contract and he subsequently sold his business to a listed New York company and moved to New Zealand.

When back in Queenstown last year he realised the opportunity for a new luxury hotel in the centre of town because there were only two others in the centre of town - Eichardt's and Sofitel.

He plans to sell the hotel in its entirety or as titled units.

According to resource consent documents lodged with the Queenstown Lakes District Council, Carlin's newly registered company South Island Investments will build a four-level plus two basement level retail and hotel development with a central courtyard on the corner of Man and Brecon Streets.

The project is the first major project under the new Town Centre zoning and has a high pedestrian count.

Brecon St is one of the town's busiest pedestrian areas, and the area outside the hotel will be public space where anyone can sit at the seats and tables provided.