New Life for Old Building

New Life for Old Building

Stuck for a Christmas party idea this year? A Raetihi business has launched a unique way of attracting customers through its doors during what was once the ‘quiet season.’

The former Waimarino Hospital Nurses Home was dilapidated and uninhabitable when proprietor Sandy Waters purchased it eight years ago. Its previous owners had left the country when the reality of renovating, with an income spanning just 12 weeks of the year, became unattainable.

With the help of her handyman father Terry, and a host of young international travellers who have volunteered in exchange for board, the 600sqm building has undergone several improvements since opening as guest accommodation venue Snowy Waters Lodge.

Winter is by far their busiest season with guests booking the Lodge exclusively for team building retreats, school camps and social club trips. Up to 40 people can stay in the 14-bedroom facility and its large indoor/outdoor entertainment area doubles as meeting space or dining room.

Ms Waters who was raised in the Coromandel seaside settlement; Pauanui, left Thames High School in 1997 to study Performing Arts before heading offshore on her big OE. She initially supported her overseas travels through waitressing and bar work, later moving into marketing and communication roles while simultaneously completing business management and marketing papers through Open Polytechnic.

Her varied skills have culminated in a new enterprise certain to increase the number of visitors to the small Ruapehu town; Murder Mystery events. According to Ms Waters, the building has all the history and character needed to set the scene while guests assume the roles of various characters embroiled in a heinous crime. Everyone’s a suspect. Over the course of three hours, clues are provided to uncover the ‘murderer’. In her words, the script is definitely “politically incorrect” and will have guests in “fits of laughter.”

ENDS

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