Shopping centre set for Nov. 22 opening

Press, 11 November 1988, Page 38

Shopping centre set for Nov. 22 opening

The opening date for Christchurch’s newest shopping centre, the $7 million Bush Inn Centre development near the corner of Riccarton Road and Waimairi Roads, is November 22. Builders would finish this week, leaving a little more than a week for the shopfitters to complete their work and stock to be moved in, said the centre’s marketing manager, Mr Bruce Waller, of Lion Nathan, from Auckland. The centre will include a Woolworths Superstore foodmarket, a Deka variety store, and 11 specialty shops such as an icecream parlour, coffee bar, fashion stores, and hairdressers, covering almost 9000 sq m of retail space. Refurbishing of the adjacent Bush Inn Hotel — an integral part of the centre — is included in the cost of the development. The hotel’s new accommodation block, cocktail bar, and bottle store, relocated and renamed as a Superliquorman outlet, are already in use. Lion Nathan, formed recently by the merger of Lion Corporation and L. D. Nathan and Company,

said that the Bush Inn Centre was the first major development to show the potential of the merger, combining Deka, Woolworths, the hotel with its Cobb and Co. family restaurant, and the liquor outlet. Mr Waller said that it would also be the first Deka store to open under that name, rather than being a renamed L. D. Nathan, Mark II or Maximart. The Woolworths store would be the first in Christchurch designed from scratch rather than refurbished as a Woolworths Superstore, the emphasis being on fresh food, and consequently massive fresh food departments, he said. Because all tenants were opening new stores instead of relocating from elsewhere in Christchurch, the development would create 300 new jobs, said Mr Waller — about 125 in the Woolworths store, about 100 in the Deka store, and the rest in the specialty shops. Construction was done during the last eight months by Mace Developments, Lion Nathan’s property development arm.