Wellywood expands
Jackson and Walsh buy garden centre
Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh have confirmed a deal to buy Miramar’s California Garden Centre as their movie empire on the Wellington peninsula keeps expanding.
Opened in 1974, the garden centre, built in and around an old oil silo, is next to the Oscar-winning couple’s Park Road Post studios at the former site of British Imperial Oil.
General manager Dominic Sheehan, of Jackson’s production company Wingnut Films, confirmed Walsh and Jackson had ‘‘entered into an agreement’’ to buy the site, on more than 9000 square metres.
‘‘They are currently reviewing their options for redeveloping the property,’’ Sheehan said.
As well as Wingnut and Park Road Post, Jackson has holdings across the peninsula with the Weta group of companies, including Weta Digital, Weta Workshop and Stone Street Studios.
California general manager Barry Lowe said his parents Keith and Linda Lowe, both now in their 90s, had received a ‘‘very good offer’’ from Wingnut and it was the right time to make the sale.
About five staff from the Miramar centre would shift to the California Garden Centre in Lower Hutt, which would remain open, while 15 would lose their jobs.
The centre would stop trading in January before handover to Walsh and Jackson in March.
Lowe would miss all his customers and said the family were very happy the site was going to another local business.
He would not speculate on what the site might be used for.
John McKenzie, director of investment management firm JLL Wellington, brokered the deal and said the flat site was the last big premium piece of undeveloped commercial land in ‘‘the heart of Wellywood’’.
Its sale had attracted interest from a variety of potential buyers looking to develop it for various uses including housing, a retirement village and a commercial site.
McKenzie said the redevelopment of the site would provide jobs and ‘‘bring in an excess of 200 people’’ to the suburb.