Plan to bowl historic building for hotel
Owners of Christchurch’s historic Harley Chambers building want to demolish it to build a luxury hotel.
Earthquake damaged and derelict, the old, heritage-listed office building at the corner of Cambridge Tce and Worcester Blvd was on the city council’s ‘‘Dirty 30’’ list of problematic sites.
Owners Lee Pee Ltd released early hotel plans last year after rejecting repair or replacement options. The company’s demolition resource consent is now being considered by the Christchurch City Council.
The firm plans to build a 150-room hotel with eight levels, including a basement. It will wrap around the historic building next door that the company also owns, the Worcester Chambers, which will be altered and shortened to form part of the hotel.
Lee Pee Ltd is owned by Gerard McCoy – a Hong Kong-based lawyer from Christchurch who has represented Kim Dotcom – and his wife Siu-Wai McCoy. The company owns several other commercial properties in the city.
Company spokeswoman Rosie Hobbs said the timing of the new hotel would depend on how long consent, detailed drawings and construction tendering took.
Hobbs confirmed it would be a ‘‘real top-end luxury hotel’’.
The company had a hotel operator, whose identity would be revealed once plans were certain, she said. The operator did not have an existing hotel in Christchurch.
The three-storey Harley Building was built between 1929 and
1934 in Georgian revival style and has a category two Heritage NZ listing. It has been damaged by taggers, vandals and squatters since the 2010 and 2011 quakes.
Lee Pee’s consent application said repairing the building would have cost up to $14 million, replicating it would have cost
$10.7m and building new behind the old facade $11.1m. It bought the brick Worcester Chambers for the project from city councillor Jamie Gough and his property investor father Tracy Gough, who had repaired and strengthened it.