‘Milestone’ moment as Blenheim hotel gets resource consent

Friday, 11 July 2025

Plans for a new riverside hotel in the centre of Blenheim have been granted resource consent.

Meanwhile, work is ramping up on a new wine and food hub and restaurant next door, in the old Clubs of Marlborough building, with a formal opening locked in for September.

The restaurant even has a name, Oak and Ivy. However, the restaurateur behind the venture remains a closely guarded secret.

Developer Chris Thornley is spearheading the ambitious project, which includes the Marlborough Wine and Food Experience and a six-floor, 123-bedroom hotel next door, where the old Marlborough Club used to be, not to be confused with the Clubs of Marlborough.

The project would transform the area, with the ASB Theatre, the Marlborough Wine and Food Experience, the Marlborough Events Centre and the hotel in a row on the banks of the Taylor River.

The hotel would have some parking and some rooms on the ground floor, with its reception on the ground floor of the former Clubs of Marlborough building, downstairs from the Marlborough Wine and Food Experience.

Thornley said the resource consent was “quite a milestone”. He thought groundwork on the hotel, at 6 Russell Tce, could start in the next couple of months. The tender for the hotel build would go out in the next six to eight weeks, he said.

Thornley and his team, a family syndicate, were talking to potential investors about helping to finance the build. “The only hurdle left is financing,” he said.

The syndicate was called Alfred Taylor Developments as the wider development area was hemmed in by Alfred St and the Taylor River. The former Clubs of Marlborough building had been renamed the Alfred Taylor Centre.

“We’re confident we’ll get there,” Thornley said of the hotel, while giving the Express a sneak peek of the work already done at the Marlborough Wine and Food Experience.

A dividing wall had been built to separate the wine and food hub from the restaurant, with large heavy bi-fold doors that could open the space up.

In the hub, about a dozen large units — almost like book shelves — were strategically positioned at one end. Wine dispensers would be added to the units, where guests could buy tastings.

At the other end were “manned” wine-tasting booths, for people who “want to go and talk to somebody [about wine] … these other ones (the dispensers), you get your card on the way in and away you go.”

Next to the manned booths was a produce stall that would serve seafood, meats and cheeses. A fish tank for live crayfish in the restaurant was still in its cardboard box.

Thornley said the restaurant, named Oak and Ivy, would be “high-end”. The new kitchen would double as the hotel kitchen, and the former Taylor Room, off the new restaurant, would be the breakfast area for hotel guests. The two buildings would be joined by an airbridge, or first floor corridor.

Elsewhere, there were private function and tasting rooms and a retail space. Thornley said Alfred Taylor Developments recently had their annual general meeting in one of the private function rooms, the Trade Room, with a “sample dinner” from the restaurant and the “stakeholders were absolutely stoked”.

Thornley said it was “pretty cool” to see the space starting to “look like it is something”.

Anyone who thought they were “pie-in-the-sky dreamers” might be having second thoughts, he said.

The consent decision, in the council’s property files, showed the hotel work would include excavation within a Groundwater Protection Area. A replacement flood protection structure that served as a flood barrier and a retaining wall for the hotel would be needed.

The formal opening of the Marlborough Wine and Food Experience was set for September 18.