Redeveloped from the former Menzies Building in lower Esk St, the 4.5-star hotel would provide 150 guest rooms as well as a ground floor restaurant and reception.
The former Southland Frozen Meats site opposite the hotel was also being developed to include a three-storey 120 carpark building as well as 12 two or three-bedroom apartments.
The construction crew were trying to ensure the opening of the carpark coincided with the the hotel opening.
But Mr Rankin expected the apartments would be finished later.
“The main focus is the hotel, the lower Esk St/Wachner Pl works and the carpark.”
He believed the original timeline to open the hotel by the end of last year might have been “quite ambitious”.
“It just took a bit longer to get the whole design process going.”
It had been quite an involved design process to incorporate offshore-sourced facades on to an original structure, he said.
JK Stevens and Amalgamated Builders were integral to the project to achieve the outcome we were looking for, he said.
“… to get all the existing floor heights and everything working … even though it took longer to get to there than we thought, it actually went pretty smoothly.”
The new roof structure, for health and safety reasons, was constructed on the ground in four sections and lifted into place with a 160tonne mobile crane.
“By doing this it sped up the build process as well as reduce the need to work at heights.
“We’re definitely making headway now. We’ve got tilers on to level 2, painters on level 3 and we’ve got gib going up to level 6, so it’s flying pretty quickly now.”
An additional lift was now installed and the two original lifts had been replaced and operational.
Mr Rankin was unsure when the Distinction Hotel chain would start to receive reservations.
The Invercargill project will be the 17th hotel owned by the New Zealand-owned Distinction Hotel chain which operates across 11 New Zealand locations.
The Distinction Group’s first hotel is on the foreshore of Southland’s Lake Te Anau.
– By Toni McDonald
