The historic but deteriorating Club Hotel in Gore St, which was constructed in 1884-1885, is about to lose its veranda.
The Bluff Oyster Festival Trust had asked to demolish the hotel altogether — the building could not be sold and it was too expensive to maintain — but the Invercargill City Council declined that request.
It now has consent to knock down the veranda, after the council issued a notice about safety concerns late last year.
Festival committee member Kylie Fowler
said the consent had conditions including the submission of a transport management plan, a timeline for the work, and the reinstatement — to the council’s standards — of the footpath where the veranda posts would be removed.
She said work had to be started within 12 months and completed within three months.
However, she believed it would be finished before this year’s festival on May 23.
Heritage New Zealand had said the veranda was a recent addition and thus was "not in sympathy with the heritage facade to which it is attached", Ms Fowler said.
The Bluff Community Board had not opposed the consent application, she said.
The trust still wanted to demolish the whole building.
However, the cost of seeking consent meant the trust would have to wait at least until the next festival, in order to "stock their coffers".
It had spent $80,000 on reports and documentation since the beginning of the resource consent process, she said.
"Until we reapply, nothing can happen and we will need to go through the whole expensive process again. It will mean a new report as the rules changes since we had our last earthquake-prone engineering report done."
