The Front Page: How did Waiwera Thermal Resort become a wasteland?

Not sitting so pretty after years of neglect: the pair of well-recognised elephants at Waiwera Thermal Resort. Photo / supplied

Visit Waiwera Thermal Resort today and you’ll find something that resembles an apocalyptic wasteland.

Animal ornaments stand discarded, pools are filled with green gunge and dilapidated buildings stand empty.

NZ Herald property editor Anne Gibson has reported on this saga from the beginning and tells The Front Page podcast that a sadness hangs over a place that once offered so much joy to visiting families.

“People who have great memories of that place are horrified by the way it looks these days,” says Gibson.

“There’s rubbish floating in the pools, the gardens are unkempt and the iconic statutes of the two elephants, a seal and a frog look like something out of a horror movie.”

As with most business collapses, the demise of Waiwera comes down to the simple issue of money – or, more accurately, the lack thereof.

“It’s been a financial failure as a thermal resort because it was abandoned by the parties who leased it, a Russian and American, who had a plan to refurbish it,” says Gibson.

“They shut it in early 2018 and said they would do it up and bring it back to life. But it’s been shut ever since with no hope of it being open to people again.”

In 2019, Urban Partners, the owners of the land announced a $250 million plan to refurbish the project, offering hope of a future.

“The indication then was that Urban Partners would collaborate with another business or another business would come in and do that huge master plan, but that just went dead. Nothing was said after that, so we can only assume there were no parties that came in or there weren’t successful negotiations.”

Investing the resources and energy into developing a project like this would have been a big ask – particularly given it wasn’t clear if the business would even be profitable once it opened again.

“Urban Partners has always said that they’re not in the business of running a resort. So they wanted someone else to come in. Various international leisure resort businesses talked at various times, but no deals were ever struck.”

Efforts have also been made to sell off the park and the land it stands on, but the current market conditions have also made this difficult – particularly when factoring in the dilapidated structures on the land.

“If you look up mortgagee sales on property websites, you’ll see there are a few large bits of land that need development. In a high-inflation, high-interest rate environment, people often can’t get the money to be able to do that sort of thing.”

This has left no other option beyond the demolition of the site.

• So what does the future hold?
• Will any parts of the thermal resort be retained?
• Does this send a warning to other businesses?
• And what lessons can the owners of large properties learn from the demise of Waiwera Thermal Resort?

Listen to the full episode of The Front Page podcast to hear Gibson go into depth on all these issues.

The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. It is presented by Damien Venuto, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in business reporting who joined the Herald in 2017.

You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.