Reading Cinemas on Wellington's Courtenay Place (file photo). Photo: RNZ
- New owners of Wellington's boarded-up cinema complex - Primeproperty Group - will lease the site back to Reading Cinemas after earthquake strengthening is completed.
- Councillor Tim Brown says the news is a "win-win" for the city.
- Hospitality advocates say the move will attract a greater variety of people to the beleaguered party district in the heart of the city.
Reading Cinemas will return to its shuttered Wellington complex, news heralded as a "win-win" for the city.
The cinema building in the Courtenay Place complex had sat unused since it was closed due to earthquake concerns in 2019.
New owners, Primeproperty Group (Prime), recently announced their intention to lease the site back to Reading Cinemas once earthquake strengthening is completed.
Prime purchased the Wellington property from Reading Cinemas for $38 million according details of the announcement.
Mayor Tory Whanau had previously made forming a deal between the Wellington City Council and Reading Cinemas to develop the complex one of her top priorities.
But last year the council announced it had given up on the $32m plan to buy the land and lease it back to the company.
That led to it going up for sale in July.
Even with the council fronting $32m to purchase the land beneath the site, Reading would still have had to come up with approximately $70m to redevelop the complex according to Wellington councillor Tim Brown.
"The good thing about Prime coming in is that Prime has got substantial resources - it's got a great deal of expertise - it's done refurbishments of this nature before so it feels like a bit of a win-win for everybody," Brown said.
Head of Trinity Hospitality Group Jeremy Smith said he hoped the cinema chain's return to the location would attract a greater variety of people back to the city's entertainment district.
"Having that balance between cinemas, retail and hospitality - it's going to be great for the street - because you're bringing people in at different times of the day and that's what Courtenay Place needs to revitalise is the street to be busy from the late afternoon through the dining into the late night live music scene," Smith said.
Disruption from the Council's Golden Mile project remained a potential "spanner in the works", for a community desperate to see the party district come alive again, he said.
"That's going to disrupt the whole street for potentially a long time.
"Personally, I'd prefer the Golden Mile doesn't go ahead and we look at other alternatives of revitalising Courtenay Place and that will speed up the entire process as well," Smith said.
Whanau said she welcomed Primeproperty taking over the site. Stating that the completion of the Golden Mile project would ultimately be beneficial to businesses in the area.
"The council's Golden Mile project will kick off this year. In the first stage of the project, we will revitalise Courtenay Place and bring new life and energy to the heart of our city.
"Businesses will significantly benefit from the influx of customers that will be attracted to the area once the revitalisation is complete," Whanau said.
Jon Justice, duty manager at nearby pool hall The Ballroom, said he hoped reopening the complex would lift the tone of the strip and send a few more customers his way between showings.
Jon Justice, duty manager at The Ballroom. Photo: RNZ / Bill Hickman
"That's 40 metres of unused frontage that quite often gets squatted in front of - graffiti moves in - people avoid it because of that," Justice said.
Film-maker and reviewer Graeme Tuckett said local cinemas had stepped up to fill the gap left by the closure of the multiplex in 2019.
He hoped Reading would invest enough in the complex to set it apart from the other offerings in the capital.
"Plus the mighty Embassy [Theatre] you've also got the Light House, The Roxy, the [Penthouse Cinema & Cafe] all of whom do an incredible job and Wellington cinema-goers have still been able to get a ticket when they want one.
"But I think if [Reading Cinemas] were to really spend the money and put an IMAX screen in there they would make an awful lot of friends," Tuckett said.
The timing for the reopening was impeccable, he said, now that the film industry has almost fully recovered from a brutal three-year stretch in the wake of the pandemic.
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