And there wasn’t just a standing ovation for Dunedin City Council heritage policy planner Glen Hazelton, there was a really long, loud standing ovation.
The man himself said the response was "embarrassing, but humbling".
The event was Dr Hazelton’s speech on what he had learned from his seven years in Dunedin.
Those seven years have been a period in which a host of Dunedin’s remarkable but crumbling 19th-century buildings were given a new lease of life after he encouraged, begged, cajoled and provided council grants to owners and heritage developers who moved in and restored the buildings as business spaces or apartments.
The area for which he is best known, despite his saying last night that was sometimes overstated, is the warehouse precinct in and around Vogel St, where blocks of heritage buildings are being returned to their former glory.
Of that area he said a $1.2 million investment by the council had resulted in an investment of about $50 million from the private sector and a big increase in rates for the city.
Dr Hazelton’s speech, organised by the Southern Heritage Trust, attracted more than 100 people to St Paul’s.
Trust chairman Brent Lovelock echoed the obvious feeling of the audience when he introduced Dr Hazelton and told him "we’re going to miss you".
The planner’s speech repeatedly pushed the importance of approaching the work with a positive attitude.
He warned Dunedin not to let "narrow interests hold you back" and repeated his criticism of negative people keen to tell a negative story about the city.
But the evening was mostly about buildings, and a sometimes misfiring projector stayed on long enough to wow the audience with a series of before and after photos of rundown city buildings brought back to life.
Photographs of the Stavely Building on the corner of Bond and Jetty Sts and the Gresham Hotel building in Queens Gardens brought audible sighs of joy.
Dr Hazelton said he had been "a small part of a much bigger picture" in Dunedin.
But with others he had managed to get a warehouse precinct full of old buildings on leasehold land, at risk of liquefaction and needing earthquake strengthening, back to its former glory.
Also making things difficult was his arrival after "the stadium years", during which time there was bitter controversy over the building of the Forsyth Barr Stadium, meaning there was "not a lot of inherent trust" in the council.
But, as his photographs showed, plenty of building owners got on board and became involved in the redevelopment of their buildings.
And Dr Hazelton said there were plenty more which could be restored, despite their condition.
He gave the example of the Standard Building in Princes St, a badly rundown building almost unrecognisable from its heyday, which now had gone "from nothing to amazing" with its restored Italian-style facade.
The first question he was asked at question time was "do you have to leave?"
Dr Hazelton responded his move was "just related to love", though he had not mentioned love to his new partner.
He did not yet have a job to go to in Perth.
