The building has been a post office and bar and is known to many as the ‘High Flyers’ building.
Photo: RNZ/Jimmy Ellingham
Palmerston North’s crumbling former central post office has been sold and will be turned into a hotel.
The Edwardian building in the middle of the city has fallen into disrepair in the past few years.
Now the property investment company Safari Group has an unconditional contract to buy it, although the price is not yet appearing on property records.
The company intends to restore the heritage building and install an 86-room Wyndham-branded hotel and associated facilities.
It was the city’s post office until the mid-1980s. From the 1990s until the mid-2010s, it became a popular night-spot, including the long-running bar High Flyers and, earlier, Eagle Rock.
It is known to many as the High Flyers building.
In recent years plans to develop it as a bus shelter, retail space and conference venue had come to nothing.
Safari Group plans to turn the two-storey building into a 86-room hotel.
Photo: RNZ/Jimmy Ellingham
It was worth about $3 million and the council has said financial support would be available to new owners through the council’s heritage fund.
The building is owned by a company called Palmerston Post. Auckland man Alan Moyes is the company’s director and sole shareholder.
Palmerston North mayor Grant Smith has previously said Moyes was an “absentee landlord” who was “very difficult”.
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