A retail block of shops in Te Anau is showing signs of life with at least three of seven recently vacated premises signing up new tenants.

The whole lakefront corner block, which takes in existing tenants Miles Better Pies, Luxmore Souvenirs and Simply New Zealand was built and previously owned by Wayfare Ltd trading as Real Journeys and Go Orange.

New owner southland entrepreneur Jeff Thompson already has major investments in Te Anau.

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His company owns the national Distinction Group of Hotels, two of which, the Distinction Luxmore and the Distinction Te Anau, are located in the resort township.

While Mr Thompson declined to comment, an unnamed source connected with the hotel group, confirmed that the sale had been completed and that three new tenants had already signed up to occupy the near empty buildings.

The source confirmed that the Hollyford Track base operation would be relocating to Te Anau from Queenstown and would take over the upstairs space recently vacated by Real Journeys administration, while downstairs a florist and a collective arts hub would occupy two of the shops recently vacated by the Visitor Information Centre, Go Orange reservations and a small café that previously traded variously as Kepler Restaurant and more recently as La Dolce Vita. 

The unnamed source also confirmed the lakefront café that has been sitting empty for nearly two years would be reopened and the company was actively seeking interest from potential tenants. The source also confirmed that if they couldn’t find a suitable tenant then the company was likely to start up the café as part of its own stable of businesses.

Flowers 23 owner Shirl Dennison outside her new premises on the Main Street near Lake Te Anau.

One of the new shop tenants, Flowers 23, has been operating in Te Anau at various locations for nearly eight years and owner Shirl Dennison said the move to the Main Street location last month has proven to be very successful.

“It ticked all the boxes for us” she said, “a Main Street frontage on the shady side of the street with good parking, plenty of storage and a back door for delivery’s and facilities such as hot and cold water, a decent sized shop for displaying flowers and gift items and a private back room.”

Mrs Dennison said the interflora business that she and assistant Jenny Taylor operated covered Fiordland, Lumsden, Cardona and Queenstown, since they opened on the Main Street at the beginning of April they has experienced a big increase in business which she attributed to a huge increase in foot traffic and with the boost in business her team of two would soon be increased to three with the addition of an apprentice.

She said they had plans to create a Wedding ‘one stop shop’ by establishing a collaboration between the floral business and a marriage celebrant, hairdresser, makeup artist, photographer and cake baker.

Another shop in the same block is soon to be reopened as a community Arts Hub.

Fiordland Arts Society president Trevor Bruce outside the shop the society is developing into an arts hub. He is holding a Graham Dainty photograph due to be exhibited in the hub.

Fiordland Arts Society president Trevor Bruce said the group had floated the idea of an arts hub on social media and the response was overwhelming.

They intended to provide space where anyone could wander in to try their hand at painting or pottery with a healthy mix of professional and amateur artists offering their expertise.

He said space would also be provided for exhibiting works’s of art and the group aimed to encourage youngsters to show their work alongside the professionals.

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The space would also be available to performing groups such as the local choir group.

The group recently trialed the site with a pop up exhibition held at the corner premises over Easter.

Mr Bruce said the pop up was extremely successful both in terms of foot traffic coming in and in sales recorded and that convinced them to press on with the art hub idea.