Members of Invercargill’s Richardson family have never been afraid to think big, and their latest venture to transform the city’s CBD with a huge retail, apartment and office development is no exception.
Having formed a joint venture with Invercargill City Council, in which HW Richardson Group has a 50.1% controlling interest, HWCP Management Ltd has bought a portfolio of strategic but mostly worn out inner-city buildings that will be demolished to make way for the estimated $100 million redevelopment.
HW Richardson director Scott O’Donnell says Invercargill needs a new heart. “We can’t achieve this unless we have control of the land and buildings in this key block. We already have a hotel and a movie theatre on this block, which gives us a good basis to create this new heart for the city,”
Many of the properties were bought from a British investment consortium associated with the Dowager Duchess of Bedford, Henrietta Russell, and a design and engineering team was being assembled in early 2018 to develop concept plans and navigate the resource consents process with a view to completion in three to five years.
From its Invercargill headquarters, the HW Richardson Group continues to expand its already large footprint in Australasia’s transport and infrastructure sectors. Founded in 1938 by local builder Robert Richardson, and built up by his late grandson Bill into a $1 billion conglomerate, the company employs more than 2000 staff in New Zealand and Australia.
Nowadays the company is controlled by Bill’s widow Shona and her daughter and son-in-law Jocelyn and Scott O’Donnell, who have also taken the business to a new level as a major tourism operator in Invercargill.
With more than 200 trucks on display, the Bill Richardson Transport World opened in 2015 and attracted 40,000 visitors in its first year. The Classic Motorcycle Mecca followed in 2016 with a collection of 300 rare motorcyles and in late 2017 they opened a new attraction called Dig This where punters pay $385 for a two-hour ‘Dig & Destroy’ session on diggers and bulldozers.
Embracing the motto ‘Feet on the Ground, Eyes on the Future,’ the Richardson also own a large property portfolio and are certain to be a major force in the southern city for years to come