New, Central Motels Inn opened with room for up to 90 guests

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32777, 30 November 1971, Page 18

New, Central Motels Inn opened with room for up to 90 guests

The White Star Motor Inn and Star Restaurant is a $250,000 addition to tourist and holiday accommodation in the centre of Christchurch. The handsome, double-storey inn, with 26 motel units to accommodate from 60 to

90 persons, is at the comer of Hereford and Barbadoes Streets on the one-way street system.

The inn is of two wings, facing north and west, along two sides of a car parking area that is big enough to accommodate both guests and their visitors’ cars. The inn, in permanent materials, is distinguished by a sheltered balcony running the entire length of the first floor, with a terrace above a patio off which is the foyer, office and restaurant on the ground floor. Mr and Mrs G. A. Terry, the proprietors, have had considerable experience in the accommodation trade, and are determined to give personal service to their guests. By this they mean

that they want all guests to know and like them and the inn. There is no doubt that guests will enjoy the physical comfort of the inn —the motel units and restaurant. Wall paper on the ceiling is an unusual and decorative touch.

There are six family units that will sleep five, and 20 twin double units—a double bed or twin beds; divans in all units open up to become a bed.

Wall-to-wall carpet, telehone, and TV are common to all units; cots and high chairs are available on demand. The latest, dieselfired automatic furnace provides central heating and instant hot water—the heating unit cost $20,000 and is now over its teething troubles. Every unit has a refrigerator; tea and coffee facilities; vanity wash basins; built-in wardrobes; lavatory separate from bathing facilities; pleasant drapes and seven lights in the main room of each unit.

The wide balcony with over-hanging eaves on the first floor and same width veranda on the ground floor, sheltered from the easterly and southerly winds, and big, picture windows add to the comfort of the surroundings.

The new motels and restaurant are named the White Star Motor Inn because Mrs Terry’s father, Jack Anderson, for years ran the White Star Motors in Central Otago and carried hundreds of thousands of visitors from Cromwell through the Kawerau Gorge to Queenstown. Mr Anderson was famous locally, and through overseas tourists, in many parts of the world for his driving skill, his ability to improvise in an emergency and his genuine kindness to all,

The rooms are well back from the streets so that privacy is available and the noise of traffic negligible. Garden plots, with trees and 'shrubs at different levels around the parking area perimeter will give more privacy and add to the attractiveness of the site. The White Star restaurant is a superbly-furnished room in which more than 50 persons can be served meals without a trace of overcrowding. The teal carpet, mahogany - top tables, acoustic tiles, floor-to-ceil-ing windows along one wall (with printed drapes to form a feature wall when drawn in the evening), lavish lighting and wellbalpnced grouping of diners combine to make a gay, but restrained dining-room. Mr and Mrs Terry intend to apply later for a restaurant licence. Mrs Terry will be in charge of a chef and four-

handed kitchen; meals will be table d’hote or a la carte, with the price of every course itemised, and meals priced for executives or families. But George Terry and his wife, Phyllis, will set the tone of White Star Motor Inn and Star Restaurant—they are an experienced, cheerful couple whose genuine interest in meeting other people and desire to see them as happy as themselves will make guests want to return and tell others of the new motels. A cup of coffee in the kitchen? A hint about what to see and do in Christchurch? Some hitch in travel arrangements? A word to Mr and Mrs Terry, and it is fixed. The White Star is a member of the Flag Group, an Australian-New Zealand wide concern that insists on high standards that the new motels and the proprietors will enhance.