Saga of ‘toxic’ drug-using publican close to its end
Less known for serving pints, and more for serving cannabis, an iconic Canterbury pub could soon change hands – much to the relief of locals. Nadine Roberts reports.
He lost his staff, he was stripped of his liquor licence and now a “toxic” drug taking publican may soon part ways with the Canterbury hotel he cultivated cannabis from.
A new liquor licence application for the Springfield Hotel has been lodged by Saini Bros Ltd, and Vick Singh, a spokesperson for the company, has confirmed it is hopingto buy the infamous watering hole.
Despite the pub’s rocky history, Singh, who owns the Railway Tavern in nearby Rakaia, told Stuff he believed the hotel was in a great location.
“We want to support the locals.”
The sale was conditional on the liquor licence application being rubber stamped, he said. Objections closed on Thursday.
According to local farmer Graeme Dawson, a change of ownership would come as a “massive relief” to the residents of Springfield, a small rural village about 65km west of Christchurch.
The town has made headlines for all the wrong reasons in recent years, after Blair Wallace’s company Alpine 182 Limited, of which he is a sole director, bought the Springfield Hotel for $685,000 on a lease to own contract in March 2019.
Since then, the pub has been less known for serving pints, and more for serving cannabis, after a Selwyn District Council Liquor Licensing Committee hearing found Wallace used the premises, and his baby’s bedroom, for cultivating the drug. It’s been closed since October last year. “The locals are keen to see it open again ... but it needs a different set of values from what it was before,” Dawson said. “What was going on before wasn’t good for the town.”
Wallace was arrested in July 2021 after police found six cannabis plants in a large concealed grow room, cannabis residue all over his home, methamphetamine, MDMA, two glass pipes and ammunition.
He claimed the cannabis was for personal use. However, Senior Constable Hamish Caird told the licensing hearing that while only a handful of plants were found in the room, equipment there suggested upwards of 100 could be grown there. In commenting on the “large-scale and sophisticated” operation, Caird said Wallace, who claimed to smoke one to two joints a day, would need “Willie Nelson and Snoop Dogg with him to make any sort of dent in that amount of cannabis”.
In March 2022, Wallace pleaded guilty to possessing cannabis, methamphetamine, ecstasy and ammunition without a licence, and cultivating cannabis.. Police withdrew two charges for supplying cannabis.
On six months’ supervision, he continued to run the pub – albeit in a less than traditional fashion if ex-employees were to be believed.
At the liquor licensing hearing, a Springfield Hotel employee claimed Wallace hinted to him on a number of occasions that the business would have failed “several times over” if he was not selling drugs.
Others alleged that they saw illicit drugs being used at the hotel and said there was “questionable characters coming in and out of the premises”.
Stripped of his license and his bar manager’s certificate after a litany of non-compliance issues, slack paperwork and drug convictions, Wallace had no choice but to shut the pub – leaving the town dry.
By then he had earned a reputation for being an “irrational, emotionally abusive” and “toxic” boss and had been ordered to pay $60k to three ex employees for humiliation, wage arrears and breaches of the Employment Act.
To date he hasn’t paid a cent. History hasn’t been kind to the 120-year-old pub or the people that frequented it.
Just over a decade ago former publican Malcolm West quit the hotel because of what he termed a “red-necked homophobic mentality”. He painted a less than favourable picture of his punters, saying he was constantly abused because he was gay and advertised his premise as being gay friendly.
Since then the town has also struggled to extricate itself from the unfortunate moniker of having the country’s rudest cafe. It was so bad under the previous owners, that locals dubbed the Springfield Store and Café the “F*** Off Shop”.
It’s been a bumpy ride for the town that sits prettily at the base of the Southern Alps along with its flagship giant doughnut. Now they’re hoping new faces in the town’s hospitality industry will restore their reputation.
“It’s time that we get the place back to normal,” Dawson said.
Wallace could not be reached for comment, despite numerous attempts.