Gallery puts the art into apartments

By Bob Dey

Two things cannot be seen at the Monterey picture theatre in Howick. One is the Sky Tower, visible from most of the Auckland region but neatly hidden from the centre of Howick by Mt Wellington, and the other is movies.

But with the loss of its big screen, the Monterey may have entered one of its most successful eras, this time as a block of apartments.

For many years the Monterey cinema was regarded as small, with only 346 seats, but it still had trouble filling up because suburban cinemas got the big movies last. Then, when Village Force built the eight-screen multiplex at Highland Park in nearby Pakuranga, the Monterey was comparatively large and inflexible with its single screen.

Its first owner was bankrupted soon after the December 1929 opening and through much of its life the Monterey struggled to keep its doors open. More recent plans included a fashion store in the auditorium, but failure of the fashion chain killed that idea. It closed in 1995.

Site owner Rob Macdonald, who has his own fond memories of the old Monterey after being brought up in the area, says its last movie was Strictly Ballroom. "I remember as a kid having to queue up out here for miles."

He came back in 1998, collecting a 1000 sq m site from Underground Fashion's receivers for $400,000.

Resource consent was granted for a four-screen multiplex, but engineers' reports showed the building was in no shape for refurbishing. Macdonald opted to develop apartments, the first to go up right in the middle of Howick's lively retail heart.

The 19 two-bedroom units sold off the plans in six weeks, mostly to owner-occupiers, a number of them elderly widowed. They wanted the security offered - not to mention the views.

The engineers suggested the facade and foyer of the old theatre should be dismantled, then rebuilt in a structure that made them integral parts of the new building. The original drawings, held in the Howick Library, were dusted off and the architects worked with the Historic Places Trust and the Manukau City Council to build a new frontage in the original Spanish mission style.

The replication extends to installing a dome in the theatre foyer, where Raewyn Wilson and Gavin Hamilton open their Monterey art gallery this weekend. As tradespeople put the finishing touches to the apartments upstairs over the past week, that dome was being turned into a work of art by 1974 Benson & Hedges award winner Alvin Pankhurst.

A fulltime artist since 1966, Pankhurst says the $5000 paid for his award-winning work then was a record for a New Zealand artist. "You could buy McCahons for $400 and Goldies for $3500," he recalls.

Some of his more recent work has been seen by everyone. "I did the Air New Zealand koru. I was the guy who worked out the birds."

In the Monterey gallery, Pankhurst's latest work will be on permanent display - an airbrushed fresco. "How many domes do you get to paint? I couldn't resist it."

The redevelopment project was a diversion for Macdonald, who bought Crocker Property Management in 1993, added an agency side to it and has built up a business in administering body corporates. At Howick, he has concentrated on providing large living spaces, simple but practical layouts and the provision of nooks for a study or sewing corner for the kind of buyer the project attracted.

The four front units, all two-storeyed with balconies on both floors, went for the $340,000 asking price. The rear units were priced between $219,000 and $255,000.

Given Macdonald's success in selling the Monterey apartments, Howick's retail centre may see more changes. Over the fence facing Fencible Drive, the 3 Guys supermarket has been closed for two years, the Levene's store is now used as a Buddhist temple and the Cook St Plaza has been strata-titled and sold, mostly to Hong Kong investors.