New Three-storey Shop With Parking

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31627, 13 March 1968, Page 1

New Three-storey Shop With Parking

Smiths City Market will build a threestorey, L-shaped building on the sites of their furniture and machinery auction departments in Dundas Street.

Demolition of the auction buildings will begin hext week. Auctions will now be conducted in the company’s bulk store in Montreal and Kent Streets. Tenders for the new building will be called next week by the consulting engineers, Campbell, Hamann and Partners, of Christchurch. The building will be constructed so that another two floors can be added later.

The ground floor will be 26,000 square feet, and will have an entrance in Dundas Street and exit to Colombo Street. The floor will be for the display of materials for the building industry. The upper floors will provide parking for 116 cars on the Dundas Street side and part of the Colombo Street side. The first floor on the Colombo Street side will be for sales.

To comply with City Council by-laws, the ground floor will be set 7ft further back from the street than the present foundations but the upper floors will extend over the veranda.

The first floor will extend across Dundas Street to the main merchandising departments of the company and cars may be driven across this bridge from one department to another.

The present buildings have been used as auction rooms since 1947 when a motorvehicle auction was begun there by the company. A. R. Harris and Company, Ltd, electrical importers, formerly owned the building with

Auto Bodies, Ltd. During the Second World War, the properties were bought by Smiths City Market, Ltd, and Smiths began making bus bodies.

The rear of the building was used by Suckling Brothers, Ltd, and a timber yard was at the back. When Smiths City Market, Ltd, stopped coach building, it began an upholstery factory on the site. When the factory was gutted by fire part of the burnt-out area was cleared and used as a timber yard. Then the auction departments were moved there. The first auction in the bulk store at Montreal Street, where there is a covered area of approximately 10,000 square feet, will be held today.