In the world of New Zealand construction, Safari Group may not exactly be a household name. However, the company has managed to pull off a bit of a coup with its latest project – Ramada Remarkables. When completed, the boutique development will be the first hotel in Queenstown to be located within the airport precinct, giving it an enviable position in an area ripe for further expansion, says project manager Martin Dunning.

“This project is the flagship build for this end of town, known as the High Street Precinct, and further development by Remarkables Park Limited will be built on land heading down towards the Kawarau River in the near future.”

The $27 million project, which began in February last year, comprises a five-storey hotel with retail and commercial tenancies.

“Essentially, we’ve got one basement level and four above-ground levels,” says site manager Gareth Samuels. “The hotel consists of 54 unit-titled apartments and will be branded by Wyndham Hotel Group under its Ramada banner as a commercial investment operation. Each of the apartments is available by private sale to investors who then lease them back to the hotel at a guaranteed 7.5 per cent gross return.”

The project is the latest in a long-standing relationship between Safari Group and the Ramada brand, Dunning says, and has been well received by the surrounding businesses and residents. “All of the feedback to date has been really positive. Everyone acknowledges that Queenstown suffers from a dearth of accommodation across the board, so anything which moves to address that discrepancy is seen as a good thing. In areas such as Frankton Flats, there is a wealth of development potential of a wide variety, including the recently proposed convention centre and gondola from Remarkables Park to the ski fields – all of which are indications of how buoyant the local construction industry is.”

Dunning and Samuels estimate that the project is around 70 per cent complete and currently there are about 50 to 60 guys on site most days. “This has ramped up from the 20 to 30 guys during the structural build phase,” says Samuels. “We had a couple of logistical challenges early on, mostly centred around local resources. “In a case like ours, where we’re building in precast, we’ve had to source product from as far away as Timaru, Invercargill and Balclutha. To give you an idea of resources, we basically booked out the allied concrete factory for three days. Not only that, but we had to split that up into a few pours so they could still service the other guys building around Queenstown.

The team carried out three pours totalling 650m3 of concrete into the footings to take the precast panels, flooring systems, stairs and beams. As a general rule, we try to make the buildings as light as possible, based on site conditions. With this project, though, it’s heavier than we would normally have gone for a building of this size. Seismic requirements, coupled with the alluvial base, have meant we’ve had to strengthen the building’s structure,” says Samuels. 

“Basically, we had to thicken up the footings and the foundations – 3.8m wide and 1200 deep in a web-like network across the site. This extra requirement did lead to some timing issues at the start as supply concerns meant that the structure didn’t go up as fast as we would have liked; however, once it was up and rolling, any time lost during that initial period has been made up.”

Given that the site sits in the middle of a high-traffic area, has the team faced any logistical issues around traffic and site access? “We’ve been incredibly fortunate in terms of logistics because even though we’re on the airport’s doorstep, as it were, we are a greenfield development and we’ve had such a massive space here to store materials and even people,” says Dunning.

People? “As we said, the one thing Queenstown is crying out for is accommodation – we have literally had guys coming from all over to help with this build and for the fact that they can’t find accommodation in town we’ve had to set up what we colloquially refer to as ‘Top Town Tent City’.

“It’s turned out to be a win-win scenario, though, as we’ve been able to provide the guys accommodation with access to power, water and WiFi and, in return, we effectively have 24-hour ‘security’.”

With the project on track and the interior trades in place, Samuels says the build is on schedule for its late-May handover.