KEY POINTS:
The owners of just 55 Metropolis apartments in Auckland agreed to a deal proposed by major operator Millennium Hotels and Resorts to run their units.
So few owners in the 38-level, 350-unit tower accepted Millennium's offer to continue to manage their places that it has folded the hotel, saying the low number of rooms on offer made the operation uneconomic.
Millennium stopped running the tower as a hotel on Sunday. It had a three-month management contract to oversee letting 100 units.
Jean Holt, business services manager at Crockers Property Group, wrote to Metropolis owners late last month telling them Millennium was quitting.
"Unfortunately, Millennium were only able to get a positive commitment from a maximum of 55 owners.
"A viable pool required a minimum of 90, with 100 being the optimum," she wrote.
The Metropolis body corporate had engaged hotel specialists Horwath HTL (NZ) to find a new hotel business to run the tower and Millennium was the best, she said.
Apartment residents said yesterday the ground-floor was dead without the bustling hotel business.
"We went out the front door this morning and the front foyer is a bleak place now with just one person behind the desk answering inquiries," said one.
"The restaurant and bar is closed and it's like a morgue down there. But already the vultures are circling," the resident said, showing a letter from apartment realtors City Sales offering to assist in selling or tenanting units.
"We see no decline in value to any apartment with the closing of the hotel," the letter said.
Apartment owners who live in the tower are now fretting about the building's future and the cost of running various areas, which they said had been carried by former hotel operator Ascott and more recently Millennium.
But Roger Apperley, chairman of the body corporate committee, said this was untrue. The lobby, security and fitness facilities would continue to be run by a building manager and it was only Courthouse Bar and Courthouse Restaurant which had shut.
"Millennium has agreed to carry on performing the duties under the management contract until the end of September. This will allow time for the body corporate committee to obtain quotations and sign a contract with a suitable building management services provider," Apperley said.
He praised Millennium for providing good management services. The body corporate committee was also disappointed at the outcome, he said.
Last year Otto's, the restaurant one level above the Metropolis foyer, shut after founder Philip David Sturm was jailed for nine years for sexual violation of four men, all in their 20s.
Interests associated with Colliers International's boss in New Zealand, Mark Synnott, own the part of the building that Otto's operated from. The Courthouse Bar and Courthouse Restaurant are owned by Howard Property.
