Conservation House, the Napier Courthouse for 113 years until a new courthouse opened in 1988, is up for sale. Photo / Warren Buckland
Conservation House, the Napier Courthouse for 113 years until a new courthouse opened in 1988, is up for sale. Photo / Warren Buckland
Napier-based Treaty of Waitangi post-settlement governance entity Mana Ahuriri has made its first big move on the property market with a decision to sell one of the city’s oldest buildings.
Marine Parade landmark Conservation House, a two-storey wooden structure built in the 1870s, served as the Napier Courthouse for about 113 years until relieved of its judicial responsibilities in 1988 with the opening of a new courthouse in Hastings St.
Becoming the home of the Department of Conservation in Hawke’s Bay, the Crown-owned land was landbanked for use in the treaty settlement process with Mana Ahuriri, representing the seven shoreline hapu of once expansive waterway Te Whanganui a Orotu.
The site and the two-storey wooden building, which survived the 1931 Hawke’s Bay Earthquake with little damage, was vested in Ahuriri Hapū as part of cultural redress in the Ahuriri Hapu Claims Settlement Act signed-off after the third reading of the act in Parliament in December 2021.
The Act stems from claims lodged with the Waitangi Tribunal as long ago as 1988, and subject of hearings mainly in the mid-1990s and relating to issues relating to losses of land from the mid-late 1800s.
Conservation House has now been advertised for sale by Colliers, by tender closing on November 29, and Mana Ahuriri Trust chair Tania Eden confirmed it’s being sold on behalf of the trust.
Eden said Mana Ahuriri has reviewed its existing property portfolio which has resulted in the decision to put Conservation House on the market for sale.
“While Conservation House was received as a cultural redress property there is not any material cultural or historic attachment to it which would justify holding it for those reasons alone,” she said.
It was not considered to meet the needs of Mana Ahuriri as a long-term office or other direct use “and it is considered that there will be other potential owners whom this unique property will be better suited to and whom can add value to it,” she said.
The old Napier courthouse as seen from Pacific Beach, Marine Parade, in 1876.
The building has a category 1 classification under the Historic Places Act 1993, the highest level of recognition under the Act, and ensures the building’s protection. On the corner of Marine Parade and Browning St, it is across the road from the Hawke’s Bay Club, built in 1906 and another wooden building with a category 1 listing.
After the last court case, presided over by Hawke’s Bay-based High Court judge and later Court of Appeal authority Justice Sir Rodney Gallen on August 12, 1988, the courthouse’s occupation by DoC came with extensive refurbishment and restoration under plans prepared by a historic heritage conservation architect.
The historic restoration project removed some inappropriate work carried out in the 1950s and 1960s, returning the building to a state closer to its 1870s design, and as part of the refurbishment a sprinkler system was installed.
Mana Ahuriri is currently considering what Eden says is an “exciting property portfolio of development opportunities” within Ahuriri, and it is expected that the Conservation House sale proceeds will be put to use to progress the wider housing and commercial programme for the benefit of its people and the Ahuriri Napier community generally.
Other land options have included the former Napier railway yards off Munroe St and the site of the recently-demolished Hinepare Nurses Home off Napier Tce, Hospital Hill.
