A former entertainment mecca in the middle of Auckland is up for grabs. The problem? It’s been run into the ground.
Have you got spare cash sitting around? Do you want to buy something grand, something special? How does a nine-storey complex covering 3,486 square metres in the middle of Auckland’s CBD sound? Would you like a closed food court and restaurant precinct, a network of escalators leaking oil, 928 gloomy underground carparks, stained carpet and some bad vibes to go with that?
If so, you can put your bids in today. Skyworld, the once grand, now rundown entertainment hub at 291-297 Queen Street, has quietly been offered for sale on TradeMe. Posted on Friday, the listing offers “a rare opportunity to create significant income and substantial value by either re-establishing, re-positioning or re-developing this central CBD icon”.
Agents are perhaps underselling the work it’s going to take to rejuvenate the place. Skyworld began in 1999 as a thriving network of interconnected businesses, with Planet Hollywood, Burger King, Starbucks, Borders, an iMax movie theatre, a video game arcade, bowling alley, bars, cafes, a full food court and, in 2015, a restaurant complex, in the mix. Its futuristic, complicated, tacky design was inspired by the film Blade Runner.
Over the years, little work has been done to modernise Skyworld, allowing it to compete with other parts of town that have started to thrive. In 2021, I wrote for Metro about how, during Covid, rents were raised and many hospitality outlets couldn’t cope with the added financial pressure when they were locked down. The building’s TradeMe listing admits this, saying income has halved from $9m to “$4,250,000 plus GST per annum”.
Bringing tenants back is going to be hard work because Skyworld is in disarray. The building has an eerie, abandoned feel about it, with blown light bulbs, broken displays and oil leaking out of escalators. Parts of ceilings are missing, many doors and toilets are closed, locked or boarded up, and the carpet is worn and stained. Only the video game arcade, the bowling alley and the iMax cinema remain open. Some work has been done on renovating the food court, but that seems to have been abandoned before being finished.
The entire food court and restaurant precinct is closed and out of bounds. Some outlets remain frozen in time: the bakery Bake My Day and the eatery Pastamago still have tables and chairs out gathering dust. Signs stuck to the inside of windows that promise, “Something awesome is coming,” have faded in the sun. By the front entrance, a digital display board that used to offer movie times now just cries for help: “EEEEEEEEE.”
Architects have been engaged to showcase what could be done with the place. Clean and modernised, the revamp offers a throughfare between the Aotea Station City Rail Link terminal, set to open in 2025, and Queen Street. “It will make a dramatic difference … there’s no two ways about it,” architect Gareth Huston, from the firm Warren and Mahoney, told us last year. The still-working and iconic rocket ship elevator would remain. It looks kind of cool.
But the building needs someone with vision, someone with flair, and someone with a lot of money, to make the changes Skyworld so desperately needs. Original architect Ashley Allen estimates $15-$20m needs to be spent to bring it up to standard, and that’s on top of whatever the building costs to buy ($37m in 2011, purchased by current owners, JNJ Holdings. The Auckland Council CV is $54m).
Skyworld used to have 12,000 visitors a day. Now, it’s probably not even a quarter of that. With the St James languishing nearby, CRL projects causing traffic disarray, and closed stores up and down Queen Street, Auckland’s CBD doesn’t need any more black holes. Poor old Skyworld can’t be allowed to get any worse than it already is. Please, someone, buy the damn place. Do it up, make it over, or return it to its former glory. Just do something, because anything is better than this.