$400k and counting as Hamilton’s Celebrating Age Centre sits unused

Friday, 15 August 2025

Celebrating Age Centre on Victoria Street has been a no-go zone for years now.

It’s been shut for years but Hamilton’s Celebrating Age Centre is still costing the council, with a bill of about $400,000 so far.

And repairs have yet to start on the Victoria St building, which was shut down in 2021 due to long-standing water damage and structural issues.

There’s still no exact timeframe for a fix, but the council has said the $3.5 million project should be finished in the second half of 2026. It will include roof strengthening and work to bring it up to modern building standards.

Even when the building’s sitting idle, there are costs. An initial $35,000 was spent to scaffold and wrap it.

There’s a $3.5m budget to fix the Celebrating Age Centre, Hamilton City Council says (file photo).

The bulk of the council’s spend is for scaffold rental, security, pest control and reactive maintenance, and depreciation - a yearly operating expenditure of approximately $100,000.

The building has been unused for nearly four years.

Community organisations like Age Concern were forced to move out and have been operating out of temporary premises since.

It’s a less-than-ideal fix, subsidised by Hamilton City Council at more than $70,000 a year.

However things are looking up for Age Concern Waikato as the past few months of correspondence with the council has the team feeling confident they will be returning to their space.

A view into the disused Celebrating Age Centre in 2023.

“We’ve been quietly getting … ready to go back,” co-leader Martin Poppelwell said.

“The councillors have been good to us and we’re just really pleased that towards the end of next year we’ve got an outcome that us, the council and our elderly of Hamilton have somewhere to go.”

The centre is an important asset for the city, the council’s Parks and Recreation unit director Maria Barrie said.

It cost about $35,000 to wrap the building and set up scaffolding.

“We look forward to getting the repairs completed and the centre reopened for community use.”

During the closure, the council had looked at various options for the site - including community, office and residential space - but found none were viable.

That sent the council back to the drawing board in late 2023, and in April 2024 councillors backed the $3.5m restoration plan.

The work to renew Celebrating Age Centre will see the building blueprint retained, the roof strengthened, some building elements replaced or repaired, and improvements to be made to the fire, electrical and HVAC systems to bring them up to modern building standards.

Hamilton City Council has confirmed the project is on track to be delivered within the $3.5m budget.

Although having to shift out of the building was tough for Age Concern, Poppelwell says the past three years has given them insight.

“It hasn’t been a bad thing. We’ve employed new staff, we’ve raised the bar in regards to our messaging and consistency.”

“I think when we go back to Celebrating Age it’s going to be the cream on top.”