Top-end hotels needed - mayor

Hamilton City Council is encouraging hotel chains to build two top-notch hotels in the city to piggyback on the anticipated success of its new Claudelands Events Centre.

And Mayor Bob Simcock wants to see construction of at least one of them well underway before the new conference centre and arena at Claudelands is completed in 2011.

The mayor has suggested four possible sites for new hotels, including Garden Place, Sonning carpark, next to the Claudelands bridge, and a site behind Artspost where developer Jeff Stokes recently proposed a 20-storey hotel.

A fourth possibility was a riverside site on Victoria St, opposite Collingwood St, which the council bought for $2 million from the Brian Perry Charitable Trust last month.

Mr Simcock said consultants who worked with the council to plan the events centre project estimated it would bring in $30 million a year to the city through its conference centre and arena. A sod turning ceremony was planned at the centre tomorrow.

"Once that gets going there will be a need for 300 more beds, more at the high end of the market."

This equated to one huge hotel but was more likely to translate to two 150-bed establishments.

While Mr Simcock wanted more hotels, this time the council won't be investing in them, unlike with the Novotel Tainui and Ibis. So council staff were putting together information to attract hotel chains."By the time the events centre is built I would be very disappointed if we don't have something under construction," Mr Simcock said.

The council owned a 41 per cent share of Hamilton Riverview Hotel Ltd, which ran the Novotel Tainui and Ibis Hotels. Tainui Development Ltd and Accor Asia Pacific are the other owners.

Tainui Group Holdings chief executive Mike Pohia indicated that the tribe had no plans to invest in another hotel project in the next year at least.

Mr Simcock said the council's investment in the Novotel and Ibis had been a good decision for the city but he didn't believe the council had a role as an owner of hotels.

Mr Simcock was due to meet with police today to discuss problems with young people in Garden Place after a brawl on Friday involving up to 20 people. Four arrests were made and two youths have been referred to the Youth Aid section of the police while two adults had been bailed to appear in the Hamilton District Court this week. Mr Simcock said he particularly wanted to follow up with police the suggestions that there had been some ongoing threats of violence in the area. It was not something he'd been aware of.

He said such problems in Garden Place were the "last thing we want". "Whatever we want to do there (in terms of development), it's a place that won't be successful until older people can gather and it's not going to happen while this is going on."

- © Fairfax NZ News