This is how EVT showed the pods planned for the Cook St building. Source / EVT
This is how EVT showed the pods planned for the Cook St building. Source / EVT
Once it was an office building and the headquarters of Newstalk ZB but soon it will be Auckland’s newest hotel, selling sleeping pods to weary travellers.
Budget-conscious tourists will be able to bed down in a capsule-like area where the bed fills most of the space after considerable construction workon the building.
Listed Australian business EVT (previously Event Hospitality & Entertainment) says the building on the Cook St/Nelson St corner in the city’s CBD will open later this year.
After some years unoccupied and a previously ditched scheme by the now-delisted Augusta which was taken over by ASX-listed Centuria, the building has been converted into accommodation.
“Designed for savvy travellers and digital nomads,” is how ASX-listed EVT described the old offices.
EVT said the development was planned to be 190 sleep pods with in-built USBs, powerpoints and lockable storage. Forty double rooms, 70 ensuite double rooms and a shared kitchen, dining and laundry will open late this year along with Miss Lucy’s Bar and Restaurant.
The hotel is at 54 Cook St and the opening is understood to be planned for next month.
In 2018, the Herald reported how budget accommodation provider Jucy Snooze was planning to open its third pod hotel in Auckland’s CBD. The four-storey, 386-bed hotel would be capable of accommodating more than 466 visitors per night in a mixture of pod-style accommodation and ensuite rooms.
Pods are enclosed beds and the hotel’s rooms have up to eight of them each, the 2018 story said.
The building at 54 Cook St was previously owned by Augusta. Photo / Google Maps
Property records show 54 Cook St is owned by Centuria Property Holdco. A mortgage is registered over it to ASB.
Before Centuria, the property was owned by Augusta Property and before that it was owned by The Radio Network and The Radio Company.
Two years ago, the Heraldreported on plans for the office building which Augusta bought in 2018. Construction work was nearly finished to convert that into a Jucy Snooze.
“A conditional agreement to lease 54 Cook St with Jucy Snooze has been signed. The lease is for a term of 20 years with fixed annual increases of 2 per cent and market rent review every 10 years and two rights of renewal of seven years each. The agreement to lease is conditional upon resource consent, building consents and the cost estimate for the landlord’s works being less than or equal to $14.5 million,” August announced in September 2018.
But coronavirus and the tourism downturn stalled $70m plans for Queenstown’s Radisson Hotel and the conversion of the Auckland offices into the budget sleeping pod hotel.
Augusta had been managing $1.83 billion of property assets but before it was taken over, both projects were put on hold. It had spent at least $22.1m on the two ventures.
The biggest was the planned Radisson on the corner of Man St and Brecon St in Queenstown which Augusta bought last decade for $12.9m.
