Hogben House shift finance a problem

Press, 5 March 1984, Page 9

Hogben House shift finance a problem

The man who wants to shift Hogben House, in Bealey Avenue, to a hillside property near Governor’s Bay is having trouble finding the $20,000 needed to do the job.

Mr R. E. Proctor has beer sold the former teacher-training centre from the property owner, Carlton Mill Lodge, on the conlition that he can have it shifted by March 12. The adjacent motel wants at least part of the old house removed by then so that it can start modifying the three-storey building at the rear into additional motel units. Service modules will be added to that building to provide bathrooms for each unit

A combination of landscaping and car-parking will cover the site where Hogben House now stands. Mr Brent Sellars, one of the Carlton Mill Lodge owners, said an attempt

could be made to sell the house to someone else if Mr Proctor was unsuccessful in getting it shifted.

‘Tor us, the last step would be to demolish it/’ said Mr Sellars. “We would much sooner have someone take it away.” Mr Proctor said his troubles started when the contracting company he had arranged to shift the house was wound up. It was now harder to find finance because of new regulations limiting interest rates.

"The mortgage rate is lower than market value, so people won’t lend,” said Mr Proctor.

“It is not acceptable that this building should be pulled down,” said Mr Proctor, who plans to move it in eight sections to a hillside at the top of Ohinetahi Valley, where it could again be seen by the passing public.

Finding the house had

been “a dream come true,” he said, but it could end up a nightmare because of the problem of finding finance. He was appalled by “the prospect of standing by and watching a bulldozer put through it,” said Mr Proctor. “I would sooner see somebody else in it than see it bulldozed.

“There is obviously an element of self-interest but I don’t want to see that building get smashed. “Basically, I am walking towards a brick wall in the hope that it will collapse before I get there.” Mr Proctor said that finance houses would only lend for such a shift if other expensive items of property could secure the loan.

“We are just an ordinary family who have a chance to get the house, by a stroke of good or bad fortune,” said Mr Proctor. “We are not over-moneyed fat cats.”