Motel
The motel was built and owned by the Bill Middleditch family in Wellington who were successful commercial builders . The photo below shows the date as Nov 1963.
At that time it was well known in the motel industry that a motel should be 10 units or more to be profitable. The Middleditch family tried to manage the units from Wellington, but this proved extremely difficult. They then arranged a local man who lived in one of the units and rented the other four units out. Part of the arrangement was he was to clean them. This arrangement proved to be a failure as the units became very dirty and started to give the resort a bad name. This problem and scenarios like this whether it be the Surf Club or Golf Club it ends up a problem for Basil. Every facet of the beach was interlinked and it affected every part of the successful running of the resort. It was obvious to Basil that the family trust would have to buy them to restore a standard.
The purchase of the motel coincided with Basil's youngest son Gary returning from Australia and taking over much of the commercial responsibilities of the family trust.
Gary said it took him nearly a week to clean and restore the five units, in some places there was a one cm of fat on the kitchen walls. All units were totally upgraded to a high standard. Problems arose with cleaning because there was not the work force at the beach in those days, very few people living there permanently - it was mainly holiday homes. The cleaning, bookings and maintenance had to be done by Gary. There was the odd farm worker's wife who Gary employed from time to time with cleaning too.
The above photo shows a brown two story lockwood house next to the motel. Gary purchased this house previously owned by the Evan Jaine family. This gave Gary a very large area of land including the section between the motel and this house. The house was rented out like a motel unit and it also housed the clean linen and spare crockery, cutlery etc. for the motel units.
Gary was able to procure the ownership of the motel from the family trust. The motel was incorporated with the total accommodation package through Gary's Real Estate Agency. He had twenty private families' houses along with 300 caravan and tent sites. This soft sell was like, "Selling the sizzle instead of the steak," said Gary, "...was a key factor in the resort's fast progress and high land values." Never understood by the locals nor Masterton Real Estate agents, they were totally oblivious as to what was going on or to the importance of controlling the accommodation at the resort. Nor could they understand how this resort had the highest values for property in the Wairarapa for a settlement".
The time came when the emphasis of Gary controlling the total beach accommodation came to an end. The motel had an approximate 40% occupancy rate which was considered quite good at the time, being a seasonal terminal beach resort. Gary had little choice but to sell the units on a cross lease basis and this proved very popular.
Next page : Real Estate.