New hotel taking bookings
Lower Hutt’s long-awaited fourstar hotel is in a race with Transmission Gully to open first.
Both projects have been dogged by years of delays and technical problems but Raman Sarin – who is the developer of the High St hotel – is adamant it will open by April.
In August last year, Sarin said it would open by Christmas, although locals questioned which Christmas he was referring to.
Online booking agencies are now listing the hotel, with a room costing about $200 a night.
Sarin admitted that the hotel still looked a long way from being finished but said the basic structure was almost complete.
He said the latest delay reflected problems caused by Covid-19 and with sourcing cladding.
In 2015, the council contracted Sarin to build a four-star hotel, with the council building an events centre, which would be run by Sarin’s company USAR, nearby.
The hotel was supposed to be built by 2017 and was part of a much bigger project to boost Lower Hutt’s struggling central city. The council spent $3.5 million buying and clearing land at the southern end of High St.
In 2016 the council paid Sarin $2.8m for a former BNZ building in High St, which it subsequently sold to developer Ian Cassels for $1.5m.
The events centre opened in 2018.
It had been estimated it would cost $20m but its final cost was $34.2m. In 2019 Sarin received a council subsidy of $700,000 to cover losses on the centre.
The hotel and events centre were launched in a blaze of publicity by then-mayor Ray Wallace in 2015.
Wallace said the project would create up to 90 new jobs and benefit the local economy by up to $75m during the next 20 years.
The hotel got off to a rocky start with geotechnical problems and the escalating cost of steel causing years of delays.
Sarin said the delays had been frustrating but that he remained committed to the hotel.
Originally estimated to cost $15m, he said the price had increased significantly.
In August last year, the council released a copy of a revised contract with Sarin, confirming his continued operation of the events centre, and the completion of the hotel without any further subsidies.
It required USAR to continue to operate the events centre ‘‘fully resourced and professionally managed’’ until at least July 2027, alongside the hotel.
Sarin was aware of speculation that the hotel could become apartments but said it would operate like a Quest hotel, with short-term and longterm accommodation.
He expects that ‘‘80 per cent‘‘ of the rooms will be finished soon and by the end of February the interior should be complete.
Meanwhile, the conference centre is operating but has been scaled back because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The business model had been changed to target small conferences and events such as weddings, he said.
Strategy and engagement acting director Jarred Griffiths said the council was aware of issues around getting cladding for the hotel.
Griffiths noted the council had last year signed a deal with Sarin committing him to the hotel and convention centre, and nothing had changed since.