It’s an impressive building; all curves and glass gleaming in the sun, and word has spread that it still has that lingering ‘new’ smell.
Wellington’s Tākina is located at the forefront of the city, right next to Te Papa and close to the waterfront, and it’s Wellington’s conference and events space.
Officially on May 31 this year, Tākina is still fresh. It’s seen a handful events so far – the Australian Psychological Society conference for approximately 500 attendees, the Master Joiners conference for about 300 attendees, the Festival for the Future with 1300 people, and now BEIA’s MEETINGS, with more than 1000 people in attendance across stands and buyers.
A walk-through of the new venue shows impressive attention to detail and future-proofing. With a 5-Star Green Design certification from the New Zealand Green Building Council and some clever thinking, this building is designed to last the test of time.
Toilets are filled from rainwater harvested from the building, and the glass that stuns on the outside of the building contains a filament that reduces power consumption by 65 per cent for heating and cooling the space.
It’s a perfect fit for Wellington, a city that has Let’s Get Wellington Moving – a scheme to develop and improve how Wellingtonians and visitors get around the city.
Te Papa director of commercial services Jake Downing, Tākina Events general manager Andrew Dorrington, and Tākina Commercial Development – Wellington City Council general manager David Perks on the floor at MEETINGS 2023.
Tākina Commercial Development – Wellington City Council general manager David Perks says the building was designed and built to marry public use and events capabilities.
“When the City Council received the idea of having a convention centre, there were a few things they were really clear about that they wanted, and things that they didn’t want.
“One of the things they were concerned about was putting a convention centre right in the middle of the city. It could have been something council spent a lot of money on, but wasn’t accessible to Wellingtonians on a regular basis.
“The ground floor is all about providing really good, activated space for the public. The walkway is public and effectively open all the time, there’s a café that gets a lot of good use, and there’s the public exhibition space. This space will almost always be public exhibition space and upstairs will almost always be conference space.”
Te Papa director of commercial services Jake Downing says the plan is for the event space to be rotated out every six months. Te Papa currently does seasonal exhibits, and Jake says they’ll be looking at these exhibitions complementing each other in the future.
“We’re trying to create this precinct approach, so there are more reasons to come to Wellington and stay longer.
“We’ll be looking at packages and ticketing options where people can buy one ticket that gives them access to multiple exhibitions.”
It’s been a long journey, though. With the council signing off in mid-2018, sod was first turned in July 2019, and construction started shortly after. Halted by COVID, the event centre actually tracked ahead of time and practical completion was in February 2023.
Tākina was opened just shy of a month earlier than anticipated – and very, very close to budget.
“Our budget was originally $177 million, we did it for $179 million,” says David proudly.
Right from the get-go, David says Tākina has benefitted the city.
“We straight away saw the impact of building a convention centre.
“The 400 Australian visitors from the Australian Psychological Society conference really enjoyed the city. They got out to restaurants, they stayed in hotels, and we got that feedback from those properties.”
Takina Wellington. Photo Smoke Photography.
Tākina Events general manager Andrew Dorrington says the centre has a comfortable level of staff – sitting at around 90 per cent – and they’re looking to hire more casual staff members in the future.
“We’ve just got to the point where we’ve just got enough. We’ve probably got a team of about 180 at the moment. We’ve got enough resource, but for the volumes we’re doing, we just need a little bit more.”
It’s big enough for most New Zealand based conferences, were considerations made for hosting bigger events in the future? David says they had to be realistic when sketching plans and making decisions.
“It’s one of those things where, you could build for the biggest possible events, but you’ve got to be realistic when using ratepayers’ money, and we very carefully identified that this was the right size for this city, matching the opportunity and the air connectivity and the hotel availability.”
David says the teams at Te Pae, NZICC and Tākina work together to create opportunities for all three centres.
“The ChristchurchNZ Te Pae team, the Wellington City Council Tākina Events team and the Auckland Convention Bureau NZICC team all work together to plan what our strategy is to elevate what we’re doing, both in the way we operate but also in the way we attract business to New Zealand with the Tourism New Zealand team.
“It’s a really proactive approach to that, which I think is really unique internationally.
“We also recognise that our three cities are quite radically different; Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch provide different experiences and we probably built our convention centres to reflect that.”
But at the end of the day, this gleaming new exhibition centre is all about Wellington.
“We wanted the place to ‘reek Wellington-ness’,” says David.
“The construction was done by a Wellington company and the materials were procured from Wellington companies, but also [part of] the contract with the Wellington City Council stipulates that food and beverage will be procured – as much as possible – from local companies.”
