It's 11.30am on a weekday, music is blaring inside the pub and nearly every spare seat is taken with a happy punter. But by the end of next month, drinkers at a popular Rotorua bar and pokie spot will have to find somewhere else to go after plans were announced for a new development that will see their favourite watering hole demolished. Bar locals have a yarn to journalist Kelly Makiha.
Local drinkers at VC's Turf Bar on Arawa St are upset their favourite watering hole will be demolished to make way for an $80 million Māori-centric hotel in Rotorua.
The iconic pub will be pulled down, along with two other business sites on the block, to make way for the new hotel that's tipped to be a world first.
Rotomā No.1 Incorporation announced on Monday plans for the multimillion-dollar ''wood-first'' Māori commercial centre and a neighbouring 174 room four-star plus hotel.
It is expected to create up to 120 jobs and is being built on the incorporation's long-held site opposite the Rotorua Citizen's Club.
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The area, better known by locals as "the Palace", was the former site of the Palace bar. VC's Turf Bar, which is on the end of the site, has been around for several decades, although under different names.