Reading Courtenay sold, hopes for a ‘Commercial Bay’ of Wellington

Monday, 6 January 2025

The Reading Cinema complex in Courtenay Place.

Reading Central on Courtenay Place has sold privately after the Wellington City Council’s failed attempt to invest $32m of public money to force some action at the derelict downtown eyesore.

Well-known developer Eyal Aharoni confirmed his company, Primeproperty, had bought the land but refused to give details, including his plans for the large central city site, due to a “confidentiality agreement”.

Property records show the three land parcels, facing Courtenay Place, Tory St, and Wakefield St, still belonging on-paper to Los Angeles-based multi-millionaire sisters Margaret and Ellen Cotter, who head the global Reading empire. However, these can take weeks to be updated.

Eyal Aharoni, left, as his Molesworth St building was being demolished.

The Reading Central movie and retail complex was closed abruptly after a structural report in 2019 and has become a shuttered Courtenay Place eyesore since. After years of the Wellington City Council trying to get something done with the site, then-new mayor Tory Whanau met with the Cotter sisters to get action in 2022.

The deal would have seen the council buy the land under the site for $32m, which Reading would have used to develop and reopen but, after a number of issues were found with the deal – including it being labelled corporate welfare, fears about Reading being able to complete the job, and locally-owned cinemas cried foul – the council in April withdrew from the deal.

Ellen Cotter, pictured top right, heads her family's entertainment empire with sister, Margaret. The pair met with mayor Tory Whanau, bottom right, in 2022 to hatch a deal that was later scrapped.

Amid the turmoil five city councillors who opposed the deal were subject to a code of conduct investigation for leaking, of which they were cleared. Two of those, Iona Pannett and Nicola Young, represent the downtown ward, Pukehīnau/Lambton.

“This is what should have happened in the fist place,” Pannett told The Post.

“Why were we getting involved?”

Councillor Iona Pannett: ‘This is what should have happened in the fist place.’

Aharoni owns the nearby Amora Hotel which, like Reading, has been closed and in disrepair for years. But Pannett said the council could now stop developers from sitting on disused land with new, much higher rates for central city abandoned sites.

“If you are going to buy property you have to do something with it,” she said.

Potential uses could include a cinema, retail, housing and ideally with good pedestrian access from Courtenay Place to Wakefield St, Tākina, and Te Papa and the waterfront beyond.

The Amora in Wakefield St officially closed in 2017 after the hotel suffered extensive cosmetic damage in the Kaikōura earthquake.

Aharoni was in hot water in 2016 after residents were found to be renting and living in a Molesworth St Primeproperty building despite it not being zoned for residential tenants. The tenants were discovered when the building was evacuated for the Kaikōura quake and the company was later fined $600 for the illegal tenancies.

Young saw the Reading purchase as a “huge opportunity” to develop something that was a draw for the Wellington region and could ”transform“ Courtenay Place and the wide central city.

“Hotels, hospitality, covered street market, [and apartments],” she said.

“Just as Commercial Bay has revitalised the area in downtown Auckland, that’s what we need here.”

Commercial Bay is a new and successful shopping and dining precinct in downtown Auckland.

Young also called for a lane way connecting Courtenay Place to Tākina, Te Papa and the waterfront.

Whanau and Geordie Rogers, the third Pukehīnau/Lambton ward councillor, did not immediately return a request for comment.