Long-Awaited New
p. 89 · Read in the full issue
Hotel For Suva
SUVA, Sept. 17.
THE big news of the year: After months of alternate specu lation and denial, Morris Hedstrom, Ltd., have announced that they will build a modern five-storey hotel on the site of the hurricane-demolished Club Hotel in Suva.
The architects are F. H. Beckett and Associates and it will be built by Industrial Builders. Construction is expected to take two years.
A large bar and six shops fronting Victoria Parade will occupy the ground floor. On the first floor will je offices, some staff accommodation md the laundry; the second floor vill consist of lounge, dining room, punge-bar and roof-garden looking jut over the harbour, and the third md fourth floors will be given over o bedrooms for 50 guests. These ■ooms are designed to catch the pre vailing wind and most of them will lave private bath and toilet. The laime Club Hotel will be dropped, md the establishment will be called he South Seas Hotel.
But although Morris Hedstroms lave thus broken their long silence, lurns Philp (S.S.), Ltd., (who own t) continue to brood over the urviving fragment the bar of McDonald’s Hotel which was also a ictim of the hurricane. If they in end emulating Morris Hedstrom hey have, to date, not admitted it.
However, if only one new hotel esults, Suva residents will no doubt eel that the hurricane of January, 52 was worth while. Since the war, ack of accommodation in Suva lotels has been the biggest bottle icck of the new tourist industry.
Citizens have been fond of saying hat They should do something about :. But as it is estimated that a modern lotel in Suva would likely cost half million to build and equip, it is ot surprising that even the wealthy tig Firms hesitate. It takes a lot of jurists and solid local support to get ven interest back on that outlay.
Meantime, accommodation in Fiji ! scarcer than ever this year—with kvo Suva hotels out of the running nd the Deuba Beach Hotel lonopolised by the H. M. O’Keefe lovie-makers.
Mr. and Mrs. F. C. Kugelberg, of an Francisco, have just completed a hort business-pleasure trip to Tahiti.