Part of an office and commercial block built on land once bought for one of the highest prices per square metre paid in Napier at the time could be redeveloped for one of the world's biggest hotel chains.
The four-storey PwC Centre on the corner of Munro and Raffles Sts, owned by Napier-based Thackeray Trust, is on a 1152sq m site which once contained several historic Napier cottages. The five properties were demolished or removed after being bought from a single owner for about $950,000 about 15 years ago.
It made way for a new office block built over a 14-month period by Herbert Construction and which was completed in March 2007 as the biggest office-block construction in Napier since the 1987 stock market crash.
The price was understood to be about double the going-rate per ace for commercial land in the Napier CBD periphery about that time.
The building, which houses the Napier offices of global accountancy network PwC and several other tenancies, and which has a basement carpark, was put on the market late last year but has not sold.