Harcourts hammer home victory

It’s been under wraps for a while, but the full “face” of the $80 million Waikato Regional Theatre can now be seen on Victoria St.

The last of the scaffolding shielding the old Hamilton Hotel façade facing Hamilton’s main street was taken down on Friday.

Passers-by now have an almost unfettered view of the newly-restored 102-year-old architecture.

Momentum Waikato communications and marketing manager Mark Servian said the scaffolding removal was a small but significant step in the saga of the theatre’s manifestation.

“I have lived in Hamilton since the mid-1980s, and Victoria St now looks better than at any time I have seen it in the last 40 years.”

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Hamilton’s Central Business District (CBD) is undergoing a significant transformation, with several key buildings being refurbished and repurposed.

From the rooftop of 500 Victoria Street on a grey day, the view is still spectacular, revealing a city undergoing a remarkable metamorphosis.

Looking west, there is significant activity at the city’s tallest building in Ward Street, formerly known as the Government Life building.

It is set to become a $100 million Pullman hotel.

To the north, work is about to start on Norris Ward McKinnon House, while the former Housing Corporation Building on the corner of Victoria St and Claudelands Rd is bustling with activity.

Wellington-based Primeproperty Group, a private investment company, is behind the refurbishments of 500 Victoria and Norris Ward McKinnon House.

Property manager Richard Tait describes 500 Victoria as a tired building, once frequented by government, Telecom, and ACC workers.

“This is a building where we want to get tenants,” he says on a recent media tour, emphasising the goal of attracting new occupants.

Referring to these buildings as ‘old’ would be a disservice, as they were mostly built in the 1970s and 1980s and Hamilton has other more historic buildings of note.

Tait uses the word iconic for 500 Victoria, which is a stretch for the 38-year-old building, and landmark for the 1985 building at 711 Victoria St, which given its two top floor exterior balconies regularly attract attention from down below – onlookers always on the lookout for anyone standing on them – is apt.

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Journey + Co, a gift and homeware boutique owned by Nikki Carlyon and Krystal Roughton, has doubled its growth every year for the past four years.

“We measure the growth by looking at what we’ve done the same week or month the previous year,” Carlyon said. “Those sales have consistently doubled if not more.”

For Journey + Co, the seeds of their success were sown during the pandemic.

The shop moved from Anglesea St to Princes St “a couple of weeks before the second Covid-19 lockdown”, co-founder Krystal Roughton said.

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