Temporary move for Whitcoulls

Press, 15 May 1985, Page 9

Temporary move for Whitcoulls

Whitcoulls’ Cashel Street bookstore will move house for five months at Queen’s Birthday week-end. The old Calder McKay building between Worcester Street and Gloucester Street would be used while renovations worth $1.5 million were done at the Cashel Street store, said the store’s manager, Mr lan Whitta. “The idea is to make the building more attractive,” Mr Whitta said. “It is more than 100 years old and has got very dowdy.” It would be brought up to earthquake standards and have new heating and ventilation systems installed. Another 160 metres of retail space would be added by moving offices and the old Victorian glass roof would be restored by reglazing. The store would reopen in early November.

Mr Whitta said the store had acted as a walk-through arcade for people wanting to go between Cashel Street

and Hereford Street, but lately numbers had been dropping. Competition from other arcades had caused this, and so the new lay-out of the store would be important, he said. Moving the shop’s contents from one store to the other would be a “big planning exercise,” he said. About 40,000 stock items had to be shifted, which would take all of Queen’s Birthday week-end. “But we will open at our temporary premises on June 4,” he said.