New hotel for central Auckland
NZX-listed landlord Precinct Properties plans to bring global hotel brand InterContinental to Auckland in a $298 million expansion of its now-$1 billion Commercial Bay waterfront project.
Precinct chief executive Scott Pritchard and InterContinental Hotel Group Australasian senior development director Abhijay Sandilya jointly announced the unexpected deal yesterday for 1 Queen St, the site of an existing office building facing Quay St opposite the ferry terminal.
The 19-level HSBC block will be retained, its facade removed and replaced, all fittings stripped back to the bare structure, then revamped in a design by Warren and Mahoney converting it into a hotel/office block.
Commercial Bay was previously announced at more than $850m but yesterday Precinct referred to it for the first time as a $1b scheme.
LT McGuinness has won the main contract to develop the hotel within the lower levels of the existing structure and the top seven levels will be a refurbished 8700sq metre office area.
The hotel would have 244 rooms, a meeting room suite, club lounge, gym, restaurants and bars, he said, with an outdoor, open rooftop hospitality venue which will be open to the public, spanning around 500sq m. An operator is yet to be chosen.
“The 244 rooms will be a presidential suite and a number of king suites, all with remarkable views,” Pritchard said of changes for the building developed by AMP and which was the former Air New Zealand offices.
“We’ve owned the building for five or six years and we recognised when we bought it that it had amazing redevelopment potential,” Pritchard said.
“We think, looking at the market right now, there’s a significant shortage of rooms. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has said we need another 4000 rooms.
“There’s a lot of positive trends for Auckland and a 244-room luxurybrand hotel, fully integrated into Commercial Bay, is a unique opportunity. There’s nowhere in New Zealand so far where a hotel has been fully integrated into a commercial and retail centre, where you can walk out the front door on to the waterfront or on to Queen St. You do see examples of this in places like Hong Kong where hotels are fully integrated into retail centres, but nothing like this here,” he said.
Precinct had signed a 15-year management agreement with InterContinental, Pritchard said.