Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
Prime site goes from historic to hi-tech
Desks that adjust in height using a cellphone, meeting rooms with a view and an open-plan, paperless workplace - this is life in WK Advisors and Accountants’ new office.
The company this week moved into the top two floors of the new steel and glass building, which replaced the 1884 Dalgety Office Building, on the corner of Sinclair and Alfred streets.
WK people and operations general manager Joe Sims says the building is fitted out with cuttingedge technology, has an open, modern workspace and fit-forpurpose client meeting rooms, dual boardrooms and ‘‘impressive IT solutions’’ including the phone app to adjust desk height.
‘‘We have a new phone system throughout and smart televisions in all our meeting rooms so we can work in the cloud.’’
Joe says car parking will be available once work on the site is complete, and advises customers to park in the railway station car park in the meantime.
Craigs Investment Partners Blenheim will move into a section of the bottom floor on June 7.
Building owner Robin Roselli says the remainder of the bottom floor will also be tenanted.
‘‘It’s a prime spot, so hopefully someone will want it.’’
The old Dalgety Office Build- ing on the site, built in 1884, was demolished in April last year.
Marlborough historian John Orchard said it was constructed by the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency Ltd, one of many stock and station companies that used to operate in Blenheim.
The company acted as a middleman between farmers and buyers and would have used the building to store things such as flax, wool, oats and farming equipment.
It was the oldest remaining building in the former industrial heart of Blenheim, that used to stretch from Placemakers on Grove Rd to Burger King on Main St, he said.
The building was used as a base for stock and station companies for about 100 years, after which it passed through a succession of owners, he said.
Some of its former uses included an auction house, a second-hand furniture store and a car and motorbike museum, however it had been empty since the Seddon earthquake in 2013.