What a great way to start off 2025, with the sale of Reading cinema to Prime Property. That’s the best news Wellington could have, outside of Wellington Water saying “We’ve fixed all the pipes”, or WCC saying “Rates bill going down 50% this year”. Prime Property has just secured itself the bargain of the decade, no matter the cost, as the land parcels make up a massive land grab situated right in the city. There’s over a hectare of land, and 2 or possibly 3 street frontages. It’s a bargain!
The owner of Prime, the greyhound slim Eyal Aharoni, will no doubt have already made approaches to suitable architects, probably way before he even signed a deal with Reading International, to take their miserable pile of pigeon-stained cinemas off their hands. The question we all wanted answered next is: what is he / they going to do with it?
No doubt the Council will already have spoken with Prime, again, probably earlier last year. Everyone has an opinion on this piece of land, some sensible, some magical, some just plain stupid. It certainly won’t be demolished for a great big park as some simpletons have suggested. Spend several millions ($32m?) on a building, spend millions more knocking it down and building a park, only to give the land away for free? I’m sure that Eyal didn’t get to be a multi-millionaire by giving away the best empty section in Wellington!
It’s more likely that Prime will run car parks on the site, while they decide what to do with it. Prime already run car park facilities quite successfully in several locations, a nice little earner. He’s a developer though, so long term he will want to develop. It’s a good site for hospo or retail on ground floor, with apartments or hotels on upper floors.
Personally I don’t believe it is likely to be redeveloped as commercial offices, as there’s not much call for vast new office floor plates down that end of town. Could it be Cinema once more? I doubt it. That ship has sailed, that moment has passed. Twenty years ago that made sense, when the city had Rialto, Paramount, Embassy and Reading all offering films, but now the general population seem to just prefer to Netflix and Chill. There’s no going back to the days of Reading’s ten cinema – when it was last open (2017 ? 2018 ? 2019 ?) I was often just about the only person in the room if they tried to show anything other than big box bonkbusting blockbusters.
It could, of course, be a site for the long awaited, much promised, never delivered National Art Gallery, if the Council or Government were to buy into it, but: This Council? No way, they’re morally and financially bankrupt. This Government? No way, they’re morally have zero interest in arts or heritage. Maybe it could become a giant stabling yard for Light Rail trains?
I jest, of course, as we all now know that Simon Says: More Roads. Not trains.
There have been other suggestions from the public as to what could be done with the site. A column on Scoop earlier last year suggested that a public walkway should be made through the site, to connect Courtenay Place to Takina and Te Papa. That’s not a radical proposal though – the Council have been after that site for years – hence Mayor Whanau’s ill-fated and ultimately stupid plan to try and buy the land beneath the crippled cinema complex last year.
So what actually DOES make money in this climate? Selling vapes is a sure fire way (sorry) to make money, but a one hectare Vape shop seems excessive, even for Casey Costello. Mobile phone shops? Ditto. Moore Wilson could fill it up, or even New World or Woolworths / Countdown / whatever they call it these days, but again: unlikely. It could be a great site for a proper massive music venue, somewhere in size between the Stadium and Shed 6. About the size of the Kilbirnie Indoor Sports Centre, but without the pesky netballers. Silly game.
It could, of course, be a site for a Movie Museum! Imagine that… But no, that ship too has sailed. So I’m back to where we started. Car parking, walkway through, bars, cafes, food market, apartments for lovers of noisy nightlife, hotels for people who cannot sleep, or a Movie Museum from a megalomaniac movie mogul? What are you hoping for?
My money is on it being levelled and used as a carpark for the next 10yrs.
Every so often they will tease the press (and Council) with talk of plans afoot, but that’s just to keep the critics at bay for another cycle.
KLK – you’re probably right. But before we demolish it, we need to know something.
Question is…. is it really an EQP building? I mean, REALLY ?
Let’s see. It has a modern steel structure, built in 2001 or thereabouts. It has a concrete slab on ground floor, and suspended concrete slab on crinkly steel tray-deck or something on first floor, sitting on some massive steel beams. There are some really light loads up above – a whole bunch of rooms containing mainly air, and the occasional person watching a movie. The foundations are probably not as good as a modern base isolated floor these days, but it is not as if there is a whole massive structure that needs protecting. It probably has a bunch of concrete block walls on each side to stop the neighbours breaking in and watching movies after lights out. If they are worried about structures falling down, this would be one of the buildings I would be LEAST worried about in Wellington. I’d be a lot more worried about… I dunno – the whole of Newtown?
My guess is that Prime will find a use for the building and tart it up for use in the mean time, before that grand mega scheme eventuates. We shall see…