ACTIVATION
Custom House at 252 Haven Road is a rare survivor. It began life as an Edwardian hotel and is the last of the hotels that once served the port. It is an important local landmark, and part of a small group of old buildings that show how the port and its surroundings worked before the land was reclaimed. The Council bought it in 2025.
Four options are genuinely on the table. No decision has been made. All four need heritage approval. None is in the proposed stages, so none is up for funding yet – but the direction the Council sets now will shape which one is pursued.
Custom House sits on the corner, facing the Anchor Building across what could become a public plaza. It is the smaller of the two heritage buildings, and the one whose future is least settled.
Unlike the Anchor Building and the NCC Electricity Building, nothing here is in the funded stages. Whatever is decided, it would need its own funding decision later.
All four options below need heritage approval, and all four have real consequences. The cheapest keeps the building standing but empty. The dearest brings it fully back to life but depends on finding someone to run it. Removing it is permanent.
Option 1 · Keep it standing, do the minimum
$0.25m – $0.6m
Fix the roof and lock the doors, so the building stays dry and safe. Nothing more. This keeps every future option open – but the building stays empty.
Option 2 · Fix the building properly
$2.0m
Make it dry, level and strong. Bring the power, water and services up to today's rules, done the heritage-approved way. A sound building, ready for someone to move in and fit out.
Option 3 · Fix it and fit it out
$3.5m – $5.5m
Everything in Option 2, plus a full fit-out – so it could open as a small hotel, backpackers, restaurant or event space. The biggest cost, and it depends on finding someone to run it.
Option 4 · Remove it, build a carpark
$1.0m – $1.5m
Take the building down and build parking on the site. This needs a difficult resource consent, and the new carpark adds 18 spaces.
Two things worth knowing before you answer
Removing the building costs more than keeping it standing. Taking it down and building the carpark: $1.0m to $1.5m. Keeping it dry and secure: $0.25m to $0.6m. Removal is not the cheap option.
Every option needs heritage approval. Removal in particular means a long and difficult consent process, with no guarantee it would succeed.
What is at stake either way
Reasons to keep it
It is the last Edwardian port hotel left standing in Nelson, and a landmark people know from the water and the road. Keeping it also upholds the heritage protection in the Council's own plan.
It faces the Anchor Building, and together the two could bookend a plaza – a space for community events, markets and gatherings. A carpark on the site would not do that. An occupied building activates the waterfront; parked cars do not.
A building that stands can still be fixed up later, when money or a partner appears. Once it is gone, it cannot come back.
Reasons to remove it
Bringing it fully back to life costs up to $5.5m, with no promise of a tenant – and the Council would carry that risk. Removing it frees the site and adds 18 parking spaces.
It also ends the cost of looking after an empty building, year after year.
Coastal flooding adds another complication. Lifting the floor level to cope with expected sea levels by 2080 is difficult and costly in a heritage building.
We want your guidance
Which option do you prefer for Custom House? And what matters most to you – the heritage, the plaza it could help create, the cost, or the parking?
