A.M.P. abandons plans for big tourist hotel

Press, 10 April 1980, Page 3

A.M.P. abandons plans for big tourist hotel

PA Wellington The A.M.P. Society has decided not to proceed with a 358-bedroom internationalstandard hotel on the Great Northern Hotel site in Auckland.

The society’s New Zealand board said yesterday that a higher than expected rise in building costs had been the main factor in reaching the decision.

The board was reluctant to abandon the project, but now believed that the anticipated yield was too low, and under today’s conditions would not represent the best use of policyholders’ funds.

Since October, 1979, when the society decided to proceed with detailed plans for the new hotel, the economics

of the project had been reappraised. Projected construction costs were now significantly higher than the $3O million originally anticipated. I The chairman (Mr D. A. Smith) said that alternative! proposals for future use of > the Great Northern site were now being studied. The travel industry has been stunned by news of the scrapped deal. Mr Lloyd Tremain, vice-president of the Trave! Agents’ Association, in Auckland said that cancellation of the hotel would deal a big blow to tourism in Auckland and elsewhere.

“An urgent need exists for this kind of hotel particularly in Auckland, if we are to take advantage of tourism in the 1980 s,” Mr Tremain said. Lion Breweries yesterday said that it had applied to the Licensing Control Commission to abandon two hotel licences it owns — those of the Captain Cook, in Auckland, which was to have gone to a new restau-rant-bar in Mount Roskill, and the Mangamahu Hotel, which was to have gone to a Rotorua suburb.

The managing director (Mr J. Macfarlane) said late last year that Lion Breweries would not attempt to build any more hotels or neighbourhood taverns. ‘‘Last year I called efforts to plan and build community taverns an ‘exercise in futility’,” Mr Macfarlane said yesterday. ‘‘Since then there has been the continued growth of clubs and the vociferous activities of protest groups objecting to taverns. Lion will continue its expansion in other areas,” he said.