Newspaper Article 2002 – The changing face of Stortford Lodge

The changing face of Stortford Lodge

The area of Hastings known as Stortford Lodge had its origins as early as 1884 when a hotel was built in Maraekakaho Rd by William Stock.

He named it Stortford Lodge after his birthplace in England.

While it has always been the junction of four main traffic routes, the face of Stortford Lodge has changed with the decades it has survived. Two of the four corners have high profile service stations, BP and Caltex Stortford (with Mobil just offset from the corner on Pakowhai Rd). The Richmond coolstores have been replaced by Cumberland Court Motel and Tommo’s Family Restaurant stands on the fourth corner.

It services a high turnover of people – particularly from nearby high schools, as well as the Hawke’s Bay Regional Hospital a block down Omahu Rd.

The area used to be recognised by the Stortford Lodge Hotel where BP now exists. Several years after the hotel was built near Gordon Rd, it was shifted by horse and dray to the corner of Maraekakaho Rd and Heretaunga St. It was on the main stock route and was popular with drovers and stockmen.

The Stortford Lodge sale yards were opened by the Auctioneers Association in 1903. They brought big business to the area. For some years they faced stiff competition from other yards, particularly those at Longlands, but weekly sales continued to expand.

Stortford Lodge became a secondary business centre because of its proximity to the Heretaunga butter factory, Frimley orchards and canning works, Hoxton’s [Horton’s] nurseries and the saleyards.

In 1899, Stock erected a country store and house on the town side of his hotel. In 1905 the Lynch family from Port Ahuriri bought the store and lived there. According to Mary Boyd’s History of Hastings book, Father Lynch was a big man and if he walked out of his shop during a disturbance outside the hotel, the “drunks” would disappear.

Later the Lynchs moved to one of three brick shops erected on the town side of their store, which were destroyed in the 1931 earthquake. They then built their own shop on the corner of Pakowhai and Omahu roads with a verandah in front and living quarters behind.

In front was a council horse trough. The new store remained in the Lynch family for three generations.

The store next door to the hotel became Sawyer’s furniture shop. The brick shops were occupied by a cycle agent, a boot maker and a baker. Beyond Lynch’s new store was George Britten’s small nursery where he opened a tea and fruit gardens in 1908.

On the Omahu/Maraekakaho Rd corner, Arch Lowe with his brother George, established a butchery and small goods delivery business in 1910. To meet the growing need for cool storage of meat and fruit in the district, they formed Lowe’s Limited in 1913 and erected a spacious brick cool store with a butcher’s shop in front. They also had an ice plant and according to Mary Boyd’s book “delivered ice to house wives”.

In 1917, Lowe’s butchery was taken over by the German-born Carl Vogtherr, a pork butcher from northern England, and renamed the Elite Bacon Company. His son Ernest ran the wholesale side while Carl ran the delicatessen. Lowe’s supplied the steam and refrigeration. In 1926 Carl purchased the rest of Lowe’s property with a mortgage from the meat exporter, W Richmond, a friend of his uncle’s. When he retired, the retail shop was closed, Richmond’s took over the cool store and the Stortford Lodge Bacon Company the wholesale trade. The company, later known as Hastings Bacon Company, moved to Karamu Rd in 1937 and then to its current site on the corner of St Aubyn St and Warren St. Carl’s great granddaughter is now the fourth generation Vogtherr running the business, now Holly Bacon Company.

In the early 1980s, Stortford Lodge was transformed with its own Post Office, branch banks and agencies, new shops, hotel extensions and a new complex of auto services, Tommo’s family restaurant (on the old site of Lynch’s store) and several motels. The complex was conceived by John Thompson, the service station manager who brought back the idea from overseas of having one place where families and travellers could eat, sleep and fill up their cars.

Stock and station agencies weren’t always based around Stortford Lodge – many of their origins were in far larger buildings in the central city. Today Farmlands, Williams and Kettle and Wrightson can all be found in the lodge area, as well as many other rural-related businesses.

The former home of Farm Products, built in the early 1930s, was transformed about five years ago into The Corn Exchange (restaurant and bar). There was originally a weighbridge on the side of the building where grain would be brought into a silo and milled into flour.

Other food outlets include Burger King, KFC and McDonalds, although that can be found further down Heretaunga St towards Hastings.

The Mill liquor outlet can be found on the old Rattray’s site while Robbie Burns bottle store can still be found in the original Stortford Cellars building on Maraekakaho Rd opposite the “new” Hastings Fire Station – which was apparently put there because of Stortford Lodge’s proximity and easy access to so many areas of wider Hastings.

Vision leads to vibrant area

In the early days of Hastings it was probably never envisaged that Stortford Lodge would become an integral part of the city.

When Hastings had a population of just a few thousand, Stortford Lodge was too far out of town to worry about. But as Hawke’s Bay’s population has grown, so too has Stortford Lodge.

In 1960, there was a commercial A zoning over most of Heretaunga St allowing things like hotels, service stations, shops and professional offices – as opposed to things like libraries, theatres and government administration which the council wanted to keep in the central business district (CBD).

In 1967, it was made into one commercial zone with the same rules as the rest of Heretaunga St and the CBD.

The look of the city was changed again in the early 1970’s when the infamous ring road was introduced. By this time the Stortford Lodge shopping area had been zoned commercial 2. It was still considered a secondary retail area to the CBD with the main difference being no verandahs were required outside the ring road.

In November 1985, one of the new faces at the council, Mark Clews, carried out an extensive consultation exercise asking questions about the town centre. This was just at the beginning of the era of the maxi marts and big supermarkets

The council decided to concentrate traditional and larger format retail stores in and around the CBD with the other end of Heretaunga St and Stortford Lodge having car yards, fast food outlets and other service type retail.

Those changes were made operative in 1990, but with a local shopping zoning at the heart of Stortford Lodge. They have become the council’s general philosophy carried through into the district plan in the late 1990’s under the Resource Management Act, but with the local shopping zone removed.

“The earlier town plans anticipated what we’ve got there now, but the zoning in the Stortford Lodge area was so liberal that there was risk of losing that character and undermining the CBD.

“It went on to reinforce entry corridors to the CBD by changing Heretaunga St through planting and roundabouts to draw people into the central city,” Mr Clews said.

The other change during the 1980s was the development of the dog-leg extension of Southampton St to meet with Orchard Rd (beside the sale yards) as a southern parallel to St Aubyn Street.

The Roundabout

A vision of a multi-user friendly intersection led to the creation of the Stortford Lodge as we know it today.

William Gray, now with Opus International in Napier, was urban traffic engineer for the council when it introduced many of the city’s roundabouts.

“There were three main options – change the signals, have a multiple-lane roundabout or have a larger radius single-lane roundabout with free left-hand turns.”

Mr Gray said the council chose the latter option to attempt to meet the needs of everything from pedestrians to trucks.

“We had to be able to get pedestrians across and a single lane roundabout with islands was the best and safest way to do it. Plus a lot of kids cycle through there and you have to keep a reasonable flow of traffic. It was council’s philosophy to have something that would meet the needs of what was essentially a commercial street.

“The design we chose was also safer for trucks. On a multi-lane roundabout trucks may need to cross the lane lines and squeeze in on cars and cyclists where on a single lane with a large radius they can get around without causing that problem,” he said.

“Obviously we had to take into account that one of the country’s largest saleyards was just down the road, as well as trying to keep it reasonably attractive.

Lotto shop known nationwide

Peter Dunkerley is well known as the owner of one of the luckiest lotto outlets in New Zealand.

He’s also one of the vocal supporters of the Stortford Lodge area.

In the 30 years since he took over Wilson’s Pharmacy, Mr Dunkerley has doubled its size and turned it into a seven day a week, multi-faceted operation employing up to 50 people.

“We were one of the first to go to seven-days-a-week shopping. Now of course you have service stations, video places, fast food – all open all the time.”

Rich history for popular hotel

It was the end of an era when the historic Stortford Lodge Hotel was demolished in 1996.

It had stood on the Stortford Lodge corner for more than 100 years.

The hotel was built 112 years earlier in Maraekakaho Rd near Gordon Rd by William Stock. It was moved along the road to its corner site in 1895.

In 1953 it was taken over by young businessman Byron Buchanan (Buck). His father, L. H. Buchanan soon joined him to help set up the business, although Byron bought him out six years later. He went on to run the business for 35 years before selling in 1988.

The hotel’s 1953 price tag was 21,000 pounds – most of which was borrowed at 6 percent from the Bank of New South Wales in Napier. The first week’s trading brought in 740 pounds and the wages bill, including the manager, was just over 65 pounds. When sold in 1988, the annual turnover of the hotel was more than $10-million and the wages bill $1-million.

These records and those of subsequent years, including photos, letters and court documents, have all been carefully kept in a large bound volume which is not only a business document but a memory of a much-enjoyed past for Mr Buchanan.

Two Prime Ministers stayed at Stortford Lodge Hotel, Mr Walter Nash and Mr Keith Holyoake. There was a long-standing joke that the hotel had a signed photo of Mr Nash but someone put it under Mr Holyoake’s pillow as a prank but it was never seen again.

The successful and popular Stortford Lodge Cellars were established in 1979. Mr Buchanan was once quoted as saying the cellars was his greatest achievement in 42 years in the liquor industry. One of its unique features was the creation of a four lane drive in.

Due to other business plans and because none of his children were interested in taking over, Mr Buchanan sold the hotel and cellars to giant liquor retailer Magnum Corporation (DB Group) for an undisclosed amount. The multi-million dollar deal took effect from December 1988.

Six years later the historic hotel was to be demolished to make way for a $3-million development of a new tavern and shops. The plans never eventuated but BP later bought a 4000sq metre site on the corner. In 2002, two of the four Stortford Lodge corners are home to service stations.

Photo captions –

A record ewe fair at the Stortford Lodge sale yards was held in February 1940 (yarding 29,300).

Stortford Lodge by night.