TE AWAMUTU NEWS | 1
THURSDAY MARCH 2, 2023
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MARCH 2, 2023
Alpha to serve again By Roy Pilott
Kihikihi’s Alpha Hotel is being primed to reopen as a community hub – more than 150 years after residents first flocked to it. A community group has been working in and outside 1 Lyon Street following a generous offer from its owner to allow it to be used free of charge in perpetuity.
The only payments required will be the rates. Former National MP and Auckland city councillor Arthur Anae told The News he had wanted to put the old building to good use for some time – and it was timely that he was approached by Ngati Apakura kaumatua Bill Harris. The Alpha was opened in 1867
and the double storey extension which now exists was added 15 years later. The 1074 square metre hotel is registered by the Historic Places Trust as a Category Two building. It stopped serving patrons in the 1980s and has spent time as a secondhand furniture shop – and less obviously, a house of ill
repute – evidenced by the removal of a large number of mattresses during the clean-up. Anae, who also owns the closed Oxford Hotel in Tirau, is gifting the lease of the Alpha to the Kihikihi community for as long as it is used for the community – and an education trust which he has established and will be advised of his wishes. He said Harris, was the “right man” for the job of opening the building to the community again. The former psychiatric nurse at Tokanui chairs the Ngāti Apakura Runanga Trust and is Te Kanohi iwi representative on the Waikato District Council Service Delivery Committee. Harris was given good news last week when an engineering and electrical report confirmed the Alpha – was in sound condition. Continued on page 2
Bill Harris and Margaret Johnson standing outside the Alpha Hotel in Kihikihi.
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