Plans to turn Wellington’s iconic St Gerard’s Monastery into hotel ‘too hard’

A Wellington developer has shelved plans to turn St Gerard’s Monastery, which sits above the city’s blue chip suburb, Oriental Bay, into a hotel, calling the project “too hard”.

Richard Burrell had been in talks with an international hotel chain to buy the building once about $20 million worth of earthquake strengthening and renovation work was complete. However, he decided to drop the project when the chain wanted a “significant” addition to the building.

“They wanted to get 200 plus rooms and the building itself will only take 40,” said Burrell. “So they wanted another 150 [rooms] built at the top of Hawker St. It looked like to me like working your way through five years of resource consent approvals. It was just too hard.”

The 115-year-old building is back on the market on Thursday, to be sold by tender. It’s thought the guide price is about $7m.

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While Burrell has tapped out, he believes the hotel chain is now talking to other developers in the city, but couldn’t say who.

“We would have liked to have done it, we didn’t do it. But I think there is now quite a bit of interest, and we’ll find out over the next six weeks [if there’s a buyer).”

Burrell is the second developer to step away from plans to rescue the building and convert it for modern use. In October, developer Maurice Clark dropped plans to convert the building into a public facility, such as a university building.

St Gerard’s sits on a 2433m² section of some of the capital’s most coveted real estate, with commanding views of the harbour and city. It’s thought Burrell had offered $5 million for the earthquake-prone, heritage-listed building, which has an RV of $16.9m, $16.4m of which is for the land alone.

Built in the Gothic revival style for the Redemptorist Catholic order, the 115-year-old buildings are packed with significant architectural features, including stained-glass in the chapel, native timbers throughout, and a pair of tracery windows in the library and small chapel, with views over the harbour.

The monastery and chapel were the first in the world to be dedicated to the Italian saint Gerard Majella. The Heritage New Zealand Category 1-listed building has since been deconsecrated. The last mass was held in the chapel in 2021.

In 1995, the International Catholic Programme of Evangelisation (ICPE), a missionary school, bought the buildings to use as accommodation and teaching space for its international congregation.

It was yellow stickered after the 2011 Kaikōura earthquake, and sits at about 25% of code. The ICPE has until 2027 to complete strengthening.

Beloved by Wellingtonians, the building was opened for 2018 Wellington Heritage Week and saw more than 1500 visitors during the weekend.

The listing for St Gerards is with James Copeland for Tommy’s real estate. Viewings are by appointment only, and tenders must by in my March 16 (it will not be sold prior).

Several Catholic residential buildings from the same period been converted to private use, or are still in residential use in Wellington.

In Seatoun, the Chapel of Our Lady, Star of the Sea, another Gothic revival beauty designed by Clere and built in 1924, is privately owned. The building is Heritage New Zealand category II listed.

Erskine College’s Chapel Of The Sacred Heart, built in 1906 in Island Bay was the focus of a legal battle to have it strengthened before work on a multimillion-dollar housing development began on its grounds. The chapel was saved and folded into the development.

An impressive, red-brick Tudor revival building in Melrose, Ngaroma was originally built for Wellington businessman Hope Gibbons in 1937. The Gibbons family sold it to the Catholic Church in 1947, and it was used as a home for Polish refugees.

It became the home of the Vatican’s diplomatic representative, the Apostolic Nuncio, in the 1960s, and is still his residence today.