The man behind plans for Hamilton’s next big hotel
The man behind plans for a new $120 million, 4-star hotel in Hamilton’s CBD says he wants to make a big contribution to the city.
“Hamilton to me is a city where I think I can make a difference,” Templeton Group founder Nigel McKenna said.
His comment came during an exclusive interview starting in his firm’s 28th floor Auckland HQ overlooking the Waitematā Harbour and the Viaduct he helped transform.
McKenna has a solid commercial track record and also a strong artistic bent he aims to apply to the Hamilton project.
The still conditional hotel deal involving Templeton would see his company buy properties at 242-254 Victoria St from the city council.
It has a year to complete undisclosed matters before going unconditional. Building is expected to take several years after that.
McKenna’s aesthetic sense is strongly evident in his recently opened 300-plus bed Abstract hotel on Auckland’s Upper Queen St.
It’s a building with quality art work and highly detailed features the 61-year-old takes clear pride in.
He was keen to bring those sorts of qualities to the 10 storey-plus new hotel in Hamilton between the under-development regional theatre and the Victoria on the River precinct.
“It’s a very fast-growing city. It has an enormous [geographical] catchment around it.
“But it’s in need of reinvigoration, particularly in the city centre.”
The development of The Base in Te Rapa had obviously hurt the CBD, a trend seen globally as retail moved out of the urban hearts, he said.
But he talked of how his work in Auckland’s Viaduct had helped transform that CBD space and wanted to do that in Hamilton.
“I believe I can have a similar impact. It’s about time. I feel that Hamilton is ready.”
But, noting he wasn’t afraid of complicated or challenging projects, he said: “This isn’t going to be easy, this won’t be a walk in the park.
“If it was easy other people would have done it.”
While clearly things would need to stack up from a financial perspective before the hotel and associated commercial and residential development proceeded, McKenna said he wanted to create something significant.
“There’s an ability to do an iconic building. Cities and town centres need things in their middle to sort of anchor them and then other things can come around that.”
He was first of all a property developer but McKenna said he had a strong passion for design: ”We don’t do ugly.“
The company’s already put several years of work into the logistics involved. “This year will be all about research and concept design.”
Financing arrangements haven’t been finalised but McKenna rules out any risk of the council being forced to stump up funds to help Templeton finish.
All initial work on the project was being self-funded and Templeton was able to draw on external funding as well if the project goes ahead.
But McKenna hasn’t ruled out bringing in equity partners from Waikato.
“There are some very wealthy people in Hamilton.”
McKenna said the hotel was a large, mixed use project with “multiple parts”.
“We might end up partnering with equity partners in different parts of it.
“We’re open for business”, he added, but if investors were needed “we won’t be bringing in equity partners for quite some time”.
“Our aspiration would be to hold and own the hotel component.”
Asked if Hamilton’s council-controlled, multi-million dollar Municipal Endowment Fund might be interested in getting involved, economic development committee chairperson Ewan Wilson said simply that the fund hadn’t been approached by Templeton.
But he didn’t specifically rule out fund involvement.
Wilson also noted a number of other potential Hamilton hotel projects were “bubbling along” and some had already made requests to the fund. No decisions on this had been made but these requests also hadn’t been ruled out.
“The MEF is interested in projects where we can get a commercial return and where we have a clear exit strategy” given that the fund wouldn’t intend to be a long-term investor. That interest definitely extended to hotels, Wilson said.
Some $30 million was available for investment, with a cap of $10 million a project.
Whatever the final financial shape of things, McKenna is confident of delivering high quality.
“I don’t think there’s been any project I’ve been involved in where the end product hasn’t been a good building.”
The onus was always on creating something that would last as “when you build a building in today’s world you’ve got to have a reasonable expectation that it’s going to be there for at least 100 years”.