St Gerard’s, the former Redemptorist church and monastery and Wellington’s most imposing landscape building is likely to be sold, reports Wellington’s DomPost.
A Wellington developer Richard Burrell, who has a reputation for restoring heritage buildings, is the likely purchaser.
Should he be successful, Burrell intends to turn the building into a hotel.
Pending due diligence into what is needed to strengthen the building against earthquakes, it is understood the sale price to be about $5m.
Currently, the buildings are 25% of the New Zealand building standard, and fall well below the 34% earthquake risk threshold.
Burrell estimates around $20m for steel and concrete is needed to spend on the building.
The building’s rateable value is $16.9 million, of which $16.4m is in the value of the 2433m² of prime land it sits on.
Following City Council Rates increases and fewer priests, in 1988, the Redemptorists sold the church and monastery at a discounted rate to the International Catholic Programme of Evangelisation (ICPE).
ICPE tried to raise $11m for earthquake strengthening but came up well short.
Lambton Ward Wellington City councillor Nicola Young, whose father donated a baptismal font to the church in the 1960s, was “thrilled” to hear the building may get a second life.
“It’s probably Wellington’s most distinctive building. As soon as you see it you know it is Wellington,” she said.
The historic church was closed after a final Mass on Pentecost Sunday, May 23, 2021, celebrated by Cardinal John Dew.
“St Gerard’s is our most imposing landscape building,” said Felicity Wong from Historic Places Wellington.
“It looks down on our small lives, reminding … civilised human endeavours to care for each other. For some years, it has needed a contemporary purpose to secure its future.
“The ICPE have (sic) looked after that building and have made it open and welcoming to the people of Wellington,” Wong commented in 2021.
Congregation gathers for Sunday Mass
The building is a Heritage NZ category one heritage-listed building.