Rotunda to restaurant

Press, 26 February 1987, Page 23

Rotunda to restaurant

After eight months walking past the Edmonds band rotunda near his office, Geoff Ellis decided it deserved better treatment.

That was less than a year ago. Today the Cambridge Terrace rotunda is about to begin life anew as a restaurant, supported by a punting operation, in the best English tradition.

Geoff Ellis, founder of Tourplan Pacific, a special interest tour company, says the restaurant/ punt combination went together in his mind from the start.

“When I closed my eyes, I saw the restaurant with the punts behind it, on the river. It seemed logical,” he says.

Architect David Childs was engaged to look at the rotunda and see if conversion to a restaurant was feasible and practi-

cal. His report was positive, so Geoff Ellis and colleague Barbara Taylor set about writing a submission for the owner of the building, the Christchurch City Council, seeking permission to lease the rotunda and run it as a restaurant.

The report was favourably received in September, 1986, and in October Geoff Ellis made a trip to England specifically to find out more about punts. “I was only there a week, but in that time I saw every punt facility in England,” he says. He hired a young English punt-builder and arranged for him to come to Christchurch to build four wooden punts. In December, after the local body election, final council approval was granted and work began on site.

Barbara Taylor man-

aged all on-site arrangements from liaison with the architect, engineer and sub-contractors to deciding on interior decoration, lighting, hiring topnotch staff and defining the restaurant’s food style and ambience. She also employed, boatmen to punt people upstream and ensured their boaters and flannels were in keeping with the English tradition. By early February,

1987, the punts were operating and this Sunday, March 1, at midday, the Thomas Edmonds Restaurant and punt operation will be officially opened.

A full afternoon’s activity in 1920 s fashion is planned and the Christchurch public are invited to bring a picnic lunch and enjoy the riverside entertainment between Manchester and Colombo Streets.