Originally published in the Waikato Times, Monday 14 October 2024.
By Sarah Morcom.
About a third of the support struts had been removed on Sunday morning. PHOTO: Kelly Hodel / WAIKATO TIMES.
Hamilton’s flagship Regional Theatre is moving into its next stage of construction as the last support struts come away.
Construction on the iconic theatre has taken off this year with a complex of structures appearing behind the original Hamilton Hotel façade.
Now a new stage of construction begins, as the big support struts on that façade come away, giving people a glimpse of one of the main elements of the city’s biggest public buildings in decades.
Momentum Waikato communications and marketing manager Mark Servian says it’s an incredible change from this time last year.
“If you look at the pictures from the beginning of the year, it really was down below the level of the street,” Servian said.
“And now we're not that far away from the skin of the thing being built.”
Servian said the first few stages of construction were always expected to be a “careful” process, but the building of the internal structure has passed very quickly in comparison.
A lot of the work will begin after construction is completed, when work will go towards getting the building up and running as a theatre. PHOTO: Kelly Hodel / WAIKATO TIMES.
“The middle bit, when the building has literally appeared out of the ground, seems to have happened relatively quickly.”
Completion is still on track for the end of 2025, but for Momentum Waikato, the work doesn’t end there.
“There's also a huge job in terms of getting a theatre operation up and running,” Servian said.
“There's there's a lot still a lot to do in terms of Momentum's role, and our role has always been to be the fundraisers.”
The group is still taking donations, he said, and accepting seat names, where people can pay $1,500 to have their name put on a seat in the theatre.
Foster construction site manager Dave Middlemiss said the struts coming down is a great sign for the progress of the theatre.
“It just shows the progress being made, and that the effort that's gone into preserving the facade has definitely paid off,” Middlemiss said.
“So it just enables us to get on with the reinstatement of the outside of that building.”
Middlemiss said he’s glad to see the original “Beaux-arts”-style facade of the old Hamilton Hotel still standing.
“I was an advocate for it to have been retained, so it's good to see it still there. I remember it as a kid.”
Drone shot taken of the theatre’s progress in August show the interior of the building taking shape. PHOTO: Mark Jephson / WAIKATO TIMES.
Although the facade can now be seen unobstructed in all its glory, Middlemiss said it won’t be for long.
“So even though we're taking those frames down, it's going to get covered so that it can be restored and painted. And there will be scaffolding going up.
“And then the canopy will go up, and we’ll be able to reinstate the footpath.”
The Regional Theatre will take the place of the now-demolished Founders Theatre as Hamilton’s biggest and proudest theatre. Founders came down this year after sitting empty since 2016, when it was identified as an earthquake risk.
The Regional Theatre expects to see many of the iconic acts that took the Founders stage and more. In March this year, the Royal New Zealand Ballet said they would be delighted to hit the Regional Theatre stage at some point.
“We’ve really missed performing regularly in Hamilton since the Founders Theatre closed,” said company director Tobias Perkins.
“The Clarence St Theatre is great for smaller shows, but we can’t bring the full company.
“We’re excited by the promise of the new Waikato Regional Theatre which could allow us to share the full range of work [Royal New Zealand Ballet] offers.
“Our company loves performing in Hamilton and we hope audiences from the mighty Waikato will embrace [Royal New Zealand Ballet’s] return regularly once it opens.”