Hopes Of Solring Motel’s Licensing Difficulties

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30157, 14 June 1963, Page 12

Hopes Of Solring Motel’s Licensing Difficulties

(Neto Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, June 13.

Hopes that a new Evans Bay motel would soon obtain a public eating-house licence for its licensed restaurant were expressed tonight by the Minister in charge of Tourist and Health resorts <Mr Eyre) and the Mayor of Wellington (Mr F. J. Kitts) at the official opening of the building. The motel is in a no-licence area on the Evans Bay reclamation. Unless it obtains a public eating-house licence it will be confined to serving beer and wines with meals only to bona-fide residents and’ their guests. “You are opening under something of a cloud.” said Mr Kitts. ‘'But I am hopeful you will get everything you want. It will be a tragedy for the city if you do not. However, I believe we will be able to iron out the difficulties which exist at the present time.” Mr Eyre: I am pleased to hear what Mr Kitts has said, and hope the hold-up is only a temporary one. Mr R. A. McKenzie, chairman of Mutual Motels, Ltd., owners of the premises, said, he understood an eating-

house licence had been refused —“because of a debatable technicality”—on the grounds that the. three-acre site on which the motel stood did not comply .with the Town Planning Act. Commenting that the Licensing Control Commission had granted the licence after the building had been completed to the satisfaction of the Police and Health departments, Mr McKenzie said the motel’s fate would largely depend on its ability to provide the services demanded by both the travelling public and the residents of Wellington.

"The council’s decision is a bitter blow to the lodge, to Wellington, to New Zealand an* 1 , no doubt to the Government in their efforts to encourage tourism,” he said.