Completion Soon As

New Hotel Building In Suva

The Club Hotel

AT long last, the construction o: the new Club Hotel, at th( corner of Victoria Parade am Gordon Street, Suva, has been re sumed. It should be completed ii 1958. Thus will end a period o: frustration and confusion.

Some four years ago, Messrs. Morrii Hedstrom began to build the nev South Seas Hotel—planned to b large and luxurious—on the site o: the old Club Hotel, destroyed b; hurricane and old age. Then cami an earthquake, challenging th( foundations and concrete pillan (already in, but not planned to re sist earthquakes) and a great in crease in building costs, challeng ing the soundness of the enterprise All construction thereupon ceased For a time, the part-completet ground floor housed a liquor bar where the old Club Hotel license wai exercised. It closed up when th( Government said: “No bedrooms fo] tourists, no liquor license”.

After years of discussion—during which Northern Hotel Limitec undertook to lease both the liquo] bar and the hotel, if and when re opened—Morris Hedstrom finally called tenders for completing th( building, on a modified plan. The contract was awarded Messrs. Narair Constructions, and within three they were at work.

Completed, it will be called the Club Hotel; it will have 16 bedrooms all with private baths and 13 oi them air-conditioned; it will con form with highest hotel standards; and it will cost £150,000.

This, and the completion of the handsome new Victoria Arcade (a Burns Philp-Queensland Insurance building immediately to the west ward) will mean that the northern side of Victoria Parade, from the Triangle half-way to the Grand Pacific Hotel, will be a continuous line of modern buildings, looking out over the harbour and the lagoon.

Northern Hotels plan to build an other modern hotel up near the Hos pital end of Waimanu Road.

The Government now is giving substantial aid to hotel-building, so as to assist the vital tourist in dustry. (See article elsewhere in this issue). * His Lordship Bishop Pearce, SM, Vicar Apastolic of Samoa and the Tokelaus, was to visit Samoan com munities throughout New Zealand, preside at the religious profession of Brother Felix, of Samoa, at Highdem Seminary, near Feilding, then travel: on to Sydney in November.