Once Were Warriors, now a Woolworths: Auckland farewells ‘roughest’ pub
Sunday, 13 October 2024
One of Auckland’s oldest settlements is up for gentrifying redevelopment, and it’s beginning with the demolition of one the city’s roughest pubs.
The infamous Trident Tavern is making way for a redevelopment that will include a new supermarket, apartment blocks and a public pavilion. An expanded Dress Smart shopping mall is also in the works.
The Trident’s final publican, Andrew Clapham, says it has been owned by Woolworths for 13 years. The supermarket giant bought the tavern off Lim Chhour, he believes to prevent him from turning part of the pub into a vege market. Woolworths disputes this.
“In the meantime, it’s been the most robbed supermarket in New Zealand. Two weeks ago, if you were sitting in the bar on a Friday, people would steal from Woolworths and come and sell you the food in the bar. Seriously.”
While Clapham welcomes changes to the suburb, he acknowledges that there was a “real sadness” among its regular punters upon hearing of its demise.
Peter Still had been frequenting the tavern since 1978. The closure of the pub took on a special meaning for him, as he had also been given a terminal diagnosis in the form of lung cancer.
“I’m trying to stay here until it closes and get something out of it,” says Still in the weeks leading up to the venue’s last days. “Free beer!”
Still has since passed away, a week before the tavern closed its doors for the final time.
Clapham says Still was in palliative care at hospital, hooked up to an oxygen mask, when he had his mates break him out and take him back to the pub for one last handle. He died the next day, aged 73.
“For me, it was like a second home. It was my living room, and I came down here for my friends,” Still said of the pub.
Fortunately, Still recorded his memories of the pub before he died. “She was a wild public bar, that one, with plenty of fights,” he recalls.
He says Mongrel Mob and Black Power members would sit on opposite sides of the room, while the Tongan Mafia bought bottles from the brewery next door and drank them outside among the trees.
“They’d be over there smoking dope, drinking piss and when they wanted a fight they would come down and pump the locals.”
Yet these conflicts were flashes in the pan, says Still, and while there were “a few rumbles”, he says that most people respected the pub and its patrons.
“In the old days you could leave your money on the bar, and no one would pinch it, but now you leave it on there, and it’s gone. You’ve got to be very careful.”
One online reviewer described it as Auckland’s “roughest” pub, and urban myth holds that the tavern was used as a filming location in the movie Once Were Warriors, but Clapham says that’s not likely to be true.
If anything, the bar was more closely associated with the Warriors rugby league team. It became home to a collection of around 100 players’ jerseys from various teams when it was owned by former NZ Rugby League chair Sel Bennett and his wife Ivy.
The Bennetts’ tenure is seen as the glory days of the tavern, when it had a restaurant, public bar and a bottle shop. However, things began to decline after Ivy Bennett was prosecuted for “misusing” $131,000 generated by the pub’s pokies.
The court heard in 2007 that Bennett had used the money to benefit youth groups and rugby league and had also made payments to John Tamihere’s election campaign.
The pub was then bought by property developer Fatu Fuatavai, who sold it to Lim Chhour. Clapham was later brought in by Woolworths to run it for 12 months, but stayed for 13 years.
He says its tenuous future meant it received little investment over the years: “The exterior was f…ing horrific, although inside it was really nice.”
“To be blunt, Onehunga needs a new supermarket and a bit of a push to take it to the next level. All the ingredients are there,” says Clapham.
That sentiment is echoed by Business Onehunga general manager Amanda Wellgreen.
She says it’s about time the suburb saw some love after suffering from motorway projects, power pylons and now facing a fast-tracked heavy rail line.
“It will be great for us to get more public space and something we can be proud of… We’ve put up with a lot of not-nice things.”
Council’s property arm Eke Panuku has been buying and selling land for what it’s calling an “urban regeneration” project.
The CCO’s method of operation is to sell “underutilised” land and use the proceeds to buy other land to turn into functional public space.
It’s sold the land currently occupied by the Enchanted Forest Mini Golf to Woolworths. The much larger new supermarket will have an underground car park.
Meanwhile, the council-owned car park outside the current supermarket will be redeveloped into a public pavilion and playground.
There will also be four apartment blocks in what is being called the Waiapu precinct, with around 100 dwellings. Eke Panuku says it will seek interest from private developers in the next couple of years.
It has also used the Public Works Act to compulsorily acquire some adjacent buildings, which it will demolish to create a laneway connecting the new precinct with Onehunga Mall and through to Dress Smart.
Meanwhile, Eke Panuku has also overseen the sale of two council-owned car park blocks to Dress Smart, to enable a major expansion of the shopping centre.
Owner Lendlease Investment Management says it has obtained resource consent for a new three-level building. Part of that will be an expanded Adidas outlet store, as well as more restaurants and car parks.
Lendlease had been trying to sell the $300 million shopping mall before being shoulder-tapped by Eke Panuku.
These changes are not the only ambitious project the CCO is taking on in Onehunga. Eke Panuku took possession of Onehunga Wharf from Ports of Auckland in 2018 and intends to see it redeveloped.
At the moment it’s occupied by large tanks, but it’s expected to become a mixed-use development with residential, commercial and marine recreational activities.
But priority location director Kate Cumberpatch says it’s unlikely to progress until the Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA) reveals the future of the adjacent East West Link roading project.
NZTA sought consent for the four-lane road between Onehunga’s Neilson Street and the Southern Motorway in Mt Wellington in 2016, but the project has been stymied in the courts.
As of April, the consent has been sent back for consideration by an Environmental Protection Agency board of inquiry that handles projects of “national significance”.
Meanwhile, Clapham has been trying to save a little slice of old Onehunga and the Trident Tavern. He had intended to effectively relocate the pub to a new premises at 190 Onehunga Mall.
However he says days before he made the move, the Department of Internal Affairs refused to allow him transfer his gaming licence for the pokie machines.
That’s because a rule known as the “Waikiwi clause” that allowed venues to relocate their licence to new premises was overturned in a major High Court decision this year. Clapham understands the ruling is being appealed by gaming trusts.
In the meantime his venue has been restyled into Little Sicily, an Italian restaurant, with Trident iconography continuing to give a nod to Mediterranean mythology.
A small room with the original bar-leaners is sectioned off where some of the original rugby league jerseys are mounted. Some jerseys have gone back to their original clubs, others will be displayed by Woolworths, while Peter Still’s favourite jersey was given to his whānau.
It was an emotional moment for Still when he made his final visit, not knowing he would die the following day.
“A lot of memories in this pub, I’m going to miss it when it goes.'
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Clarification: This story reported publican Andrew Clapham saying that Woolworths bought the Trident Tavern to prevent it being turned into a vege market. Woolworths has disputed that is the case, and the story has been amended to make it clear this was Clapham’s opinion. Story updated, October 15, 12.17pm.