Site for sore eyes: Luxury hotel planned for long-empty Amora
Saturday, 21 September 2024
After years sitting empty as a blot on the central Wellington cityscape, the Hotel Amora site is set to be reborn as a luxury hotel.
The hotel was closed in 2017 by earthquake damage, its proximity to the out of action James Smith car park hindering its redevelopment. Both are under the control of Primeproperty.
In an email to The Post, chief executive Eyal Aharoni outlined progress on both Wakefield Street sites. Amora Hotel is subject to a sale agreement from Precinct Properties back to Primeproperty, with settlement due in February 2026.
“(Amora) is currently going through a design process and will be redeveloped into a luxury hotel sometime in the medium future,” Eharoni said.
“The James Smith Parking building, part of the same site, is now being restored and under construction.”
The vacant site where a supermarket was planned on Wakefield St “likely will be developed at the same time”, Eharoni said.
Primeproperty owns and operates hotels, restaurants, car parking buildings, residential developments and accommodation across the country.
Reading Cinemas, another earthquake-prone eyesore, was put on the market in July, after Wellington City Council quit a deal worth tens of millions of dollars.
Let’s hope Wellington has got moving on sites that have vexed the council, public and their owners for years, rendering parts of the downtown area desolate.
Is the Amora a light at the end of the tunnel, even if the Oriental Bay band rotunda deal has reportedly fallen through, Molly Malones on Courtenay Place remains closed and the Dixon St and Gordon Wilson apartment blocks remain a blight?
Aharoni is not that hasty, saying economic issues are hurting Wellington and it will make “little difference” whether eyesore sites are refurbished or replaced.
“Wellington’s depressed economy has got nothing to do with any of these sites, most of these sites are struggling because of the Wellington economy and not the other way around,” he says.
“Molly Malones is deserted because the business in that area does not justify the investment required to revive it.
“Wellington needs to bring back the people and they are not here because they partly work from home, and because government is shrinking,” he says.
Council's focus on removing parking and cars and building “wide empty” cycle ways had contributed “and I commute on a bike daily, so I am not against cyclists, I love the cycleways but there is hardly anyone else there”.
Council had overloaded the “supposedly Golden Mile” with buses, and it was too expensive to do business in the city, he said.
“Businesses are leaving, commercial rates in Wellington are the most expensive in New Zealand by many folds, seismic requirement in Wellington and insurance costs are prohibitive.”
While several of those spoken to by The Post talked of developing a vision for Wellington first then seeing how sites fit into that, The Wellington Company developer Ian Cassels wants immediate action.
“I like to get going, right? It's bleeding obvious what we have to do, in these times, you have to use what you've got to the best of its ability,” he said.
The Wellington Company has been behind projects such as Spark Central and Todd Tower.
“Leaving sites empty is like stabbing yourself in the face, unless you really can't afford it, or you're creating something which becomes a bigger drain then you don't do it.
“You can't destroy things, leave things sitting, leave things empty. You've got to do the best you can with what you've got. It's an imperative. You musn't throw anything out needlessly. It's one of those scrimp, save, but be intelligent times.”
Wellington had human and physical advantages denied to sprawling Auckland and Christchurch, he says.
“They don't have that warmth of the culture, the brain laboratory that we have here. It's fading a little bit, you can't deny that, but it's still here. If you want to come to the thought capital of the country, come here.
“This city is incredibly welcoming and able to support young kids, people, new at work, startups, tech companies, because it's innately capable of being an intense city.”
Green list MP Celia Wade-Brown, mayor from 2010 until 2016, said some sites did need redevelopment for the sake of economic, cultural, environmental and social wellbeing.
Completing Civic Square, converting Lambton Quay office blocks to apartments, walking, cycling and public transport improvements, restoring certainty to the public service, and eradicating rats, possums and stoats “will see our capital shine brightly”, she said.
“The Civic Square redevelopment is painful but necessary and will be a very welcoming place. Council finished the St James and Opera House refurbishments very well and that’s providing great cultural spaces,” she said.
Her bug bear was the bus hub near Wellington Railway Station, where commuters had little shelter from the weather.
“It is the windiest place it seems, and should be a sheltered ground floor with apartments above.”
Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira chief executive Helmut Modlik, and former mayors Justin Lester (Wellington) and Nick Leggett (Porirua) told The Post that Wellington first needs to know what kind of city it wants to be before determining how the eyesore sites fit.
Modlik was part of a similar process in Porirua, working with planners, businesses, Pasifika leaders and councillors. With so many factors at play, an “open conversation” was needed.
“What is it we want to create for the people that live here? That's where you'd start,” he said. Porirua aspired to be the best city to raise children.
“It doesn't take much imagination to see that if you land an overarching vision, it will set your ideas on the various directions, and about what it might mean for the shape of the city; what you look to keep, what you look to build, what you would look to knock over.”
Leggett, now Infrastructure New Zealand chief executive, liked to look 50 to 100 years ahead.
“Let's understand where we're going and why we want to go there,” he said.
“What will Wellington be? Why will Wellington be the place to live? What will people who live here experience by living here? What will their lives be like? What are we trying to create?
“I'm not going to go through these sites point by point, because we need a vision for where we're going.
“If you answer those questions, you're buying into the belief the current structure for decision making and our current collection lack of vision ‒ and a plan ‒ is going to be able to get us there, and I just don't believe it is.
“That shouldn't be read as negative. I'm actually optimistic, hugely optimistic for the region, I believe in Wellington. There's opportunity there, we can turn it around.”
Justin Lester, mayor from 2016 to 2019, was also an optimist.
“Good will come out of this is. Every cloud has a silver lining, every time things break, there's renewal, it's a sort of creative reconstruction. So this presents opportunities for new generations,” he said.
“Wellington is far and away the most interesting place [in New Zealand], and it'll bounce back. It will be good to see some more investment coming in, some more capital and the next generation of investors too, to make it interesting.”
While some building owners would lose value, the result would be better equilibrium where rents were more affordable.
“Then people can take risks and take chances. It's really hard to take a risk in the CBD now, if you're young and don't have finance, because everything's too expensive.”
Wellington could not fail, Lester said. It had the country’s best high school attainment, a range of quality job options, accessibility, good public transport, it was walkable, and scenic.
“It is a stunning city. People want to come here to live, they want to visit. It's about enhancing that fact, and getting more people living in the CBD too.”
In this new series, Capital Conversation, The Post is digging even deeper into the issues holding Wellington back, while continuing to champion what’s great.