Memory box
Bye bye Hamilton Hotel. With resource consent granted to develop the Waikato Regional Theatre on the site of one of Hamilton’s most notable, ‘A’ ranked, heritage buildings, the city is about to lose another historic feature.
Hamilton will then join the host of other towns and cities around the country that can ‘boast’ an example of facadism, whereby an L-shaped section of the fac¸ ade will be retained within a much larger, more dominant new building.
With the loss of Euphrasie House in Hamilton East, the David O McKay building and almost all the other buildings of Church College at Temple View, and the imminent granting of consent for the demolition of the former Municipal Pools, Hamilton’s heritage losses are certainly stacking up. The 104-year old St John’s Methodist Church in Grey Street was demolished in 2014 and St Paul’s Methodist Church (1906/1914) has been lost to Hamilton, having been moved to Te Kowhai in Waikato district earlier this year.
The Catholic presbytery (1912) and the Railway Buildings on Victoria Street (1920) were both demolished in 2016; neither was scheduled on the district plan but the presbytery at least merited consideration and was an important element within the Catholic precinct in Hamilton East.
Similarly the former art studio of Gwendoline Rogers (1924), which Trust Waikato demolished in 2017 to make way for their new premises, warranted inclusion in the district plan heritage schedule in tandem with the Rogers’ house on the same site.
Leigh, de Lisle and Fraser’s 1965 Modernist Bank of New Zealand in Victoria Street came down in February 1996.
The city architects’ Founders’ Memorial Theatre remains at risk and the Lomas house (1954) in Lake Crescent was only saved from demolition in 2013 when it was relocated to the outskirts of Ngaruawahia.
The former building
(1908) and Victoria Buildings (1915) were purchased by Hamilton City Council in
2018, with a view to demolishing them as part of the Hamilton City River Plan. Both are scheduled on the district plan but, as the Hamilton Hotel process demonstrates, that is not an impediment to demolition.
The commissioner who has granted consent to the Waikato Regional Theatre Governance Group stated in his decision that the effect of the theatre redevelopment proposal will ‘result in the loss of heritage values though a significant part of the former hotel being demolished’.
That said, he then based his decision on the grounds that the loss was ‘acceptable’ on balance.
That’s what ‘protection from inappropriate subdivision, development and use’ (RMA section 6(f)) looks like in practice.
With support for the proposal from Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga and substantial funding from central and local government, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that heritage protection is not really the matter of national importance that the Resource Management Act accords to historic heritage.