New Auckland rooftop bar: plush nightspot to open at site of shooting after objectors strike deal with owners

An artist's impression of the new Queens Rooftop bar.

A plush new nightspot on the roof of Auckland’s One Queen St development - the site of a mass shooting while under construction last year - is set to open after the owners agreed to an earlier closing time and neighbours withdrew their objections to its liquor licence.

Five Fellas Queen St Ltd is the company behind the venture, dubbed Queens Rooftop and Wine Shop, owned by five veterans of the downtown Auckland hospitality scene.

They applied for an 8am-4am seven-days-a-week on-licence - the latest closing time legally available - for the venue on the 21st floor of the development, now dubbed the Deloitte Centre.

Neither police, the medical officer of health nor an an Auckland Council licensing inspector objected to the licence.

But the proposed terms drew the ire of the owners of the heritage Endeans apartment block across the road in Queen St, who objected to the proposed terms of the licence, particularly the 4am closing and the potential for chatter and music from the rooftop venue to echo around the area.

Their refurbished apartments, renowned for their high stud, do not have modern heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems, so temperature is often regulated by opening windows, exacerbating any noise issues. The Auckland City Centre Residents’ Group also filed an objection, flagging similar concerns.

The matter was set to be heard by the Auckland District Licensing Committee on Wednesday but the hearing was canned at the last minute after the objectors and Five Fellas came to an agreement. The application will now be heard without a hearing and is likely to be granted given there are no objections.

A copy of the memorandum signed by the applicants and objectors shows they agreed to a closing time of 3am for the rooftop bar, while the outdoor seating area on the eastern side of the building nearest the Endeans apartments will close at 11pm.

There were a variety of other conditions, including a commitment to a one-way door policy from 2am, plus a pledge to program the lift from 1am to only allow a dozen people to leave every two minutes in an attempt to minimise disturbances to neighbours.

Five Fellas co-director Kristian Lloydd declined to comment when approached by the Herald, citing a wish to protect and foster a good working relationship with neighbours. It is unclear if they have a proposed opening date.

An artist's impression of the new Queens Rooftop bar.

The liquor licensing application said Lloydd and co-directors Andrew Roborgh and Callum O’Brien owned and operated viaduct bars and eateries St Alice and Dr Rudi’s. The other co-directors are Reuben Ruscoe, who managed St Alice, and Maia Atvars who was its head chef, the application said.

Their application said they wanted to create “New Zealand’s most iconic hospitality offering” and described the reference customer they had tailored the venue towards.

That customer was a 35- to 50-year-old man or woman with a high level of disposable income.

“Older than grad/young professional (although fondly remembers those days),” the application said.

A joint objection co-signed by a number of people living in the Endeans apartments said they were already plagued by noise and public safety issues, particularly in the Te Komititanga public square next to the ferry terminal and Britomart train station.

“Their sleep is frequently disrupted by late-night merriment, revelry and hooning around, especially in Te Komititanga, which is used as an adult playground by some people to set off fireworks, play loud music on ghetto blasters, etc etc, which follows on from amplified busking or evangelical performances earlier in the evening,” the objection said.

It said the eastern Queen and Quay St corner had now hosted two “separate and long-lived encampments” of rough sleepers, who have made their home under the Endeans verandah.

Some residents of the area had found increasing levels of noise and anti-social behaviour intolerable and had relinquished their tenancies or were considering putting their units on the market, the objection said.

The proposed area of the Queens Rooftop bar in red, atop the Deloitte Centre, formerly known as One Queen St. The Endeans building is at 2 Queen St across the road.

It cited the experience of residents living near the HI-SO rooftop bar at the SO/ Hotel in Customs St East, “where noise from young patrons and DJ music has had severe negative impacts on the sleep quality of many nearby (and not so nearby) residents”.

The objection questioned whether the target clientele could cause similar issues.

“It remains a truth universally acknowledged that well-heeled patrons can make just as much late-night noise as hoons in less finery,” the objector wrote.

One Queen St, now billing itself as the Deloitte Centre, is a mixed-use development with office and hotel space, whose tenants include consultancy firm Deloitte and the Intercontinental Hotel.

On July 20, 2023, while the building was still a construction site, 24-year-old Matu Reid killed two colleagues, and injured seven others including a police officer in a mass shooting, before dying in a suspected suicide.

George Block is an Auckland-based reporter with a focus on police, the courts, prisons and defence. He joined the Herald in 2022 and has previously worked at Stuff in Auckland and the Otago Daily Times in Dunedin.