Imperial Hotel – Fort Street

2015

This 3 storey, historic building which corners Fort Street & Queen Street in Auckland’s CBD, was built on the foreshore in the 1880s and actually consists of three buildings. The building is mostly made up of unreinforced brick masonry and timber, but has a frame work of concrete encased steel beams dating from upgrades in the 1950s.This was when the old hotel was sold and the wall along Fort Street became a shop front. Now used as a Backpackers Lodge the old building was badly in need of seismic strengthening and this was undertaken over a period of 4 years from 2011 to 2015 with Abacus Engineering as the Principal Engineering Consultants. Parapet strengthening, provision of new steel frames and tying the floors to the walls were all part of the strategy to get the (%, NBS) above 67%. All of the building upgrades were undertaken whilst the backpackers remained open.

Many well known retail outlets have occupied the lower level such as Pandora, Walker & Hall & KFC CBD. Additionally the famous Queen Street backpackers which operated from 2000 – 2023, was located in the middle level, this required special coordination with respect to some of the seismic upgrades in order to not disturb guests on holiday.