Case Study 2.2: Reefton

Reefton’s main street is made up of an interesting range of businesses in heritage buildings.

PHOTO CREDIT: TOURISM WEST COAST

The revival of historic Reefton has been cast in the mainstream press as an overnight success due largely to the verve of one well-disposed investor. In truth it’s been 30 years in the making and has drawn heavily on community efforts and a couple of crucial outside alliances – very much a case of ‘united we stand’.

Located in the Inangahua River valley north-east of Greymouth, Reefton was briefly a gold-rush-era boom town. In 1888, it became the first town in the Southern Hemisphere to be lit by electricity. Forestry and coal subsequently sustained the town, but by the late 20th century Reefton was battling the same issues that afflicted other West Coast townships, including a declining population, unemployment and shuttered stores.

By contrast, contemporary Reefton has become a destination town and is increasingly attracting entrepreneurial and creative people to put down roots. A key factor in that turnaround has been the rehabilitation and repurposing of its Victorian buildings, along with the restoration of sites connected to its historical industries. Registered as a Heritage New Zealand historic area, with a handful of listed buildings, Reefton was awarded Tohu Whenua status in 2018.

There were various heritage-focused community efforts to re-animate Reefton in the 1980s and 1990s. The transformational initiative was the ‘Reefton Shop Front’ project of the early 2000s, when a community group known as Inangahua Tourism Promotions lobbied Development West Coast (DWC) for funding to rehabilitate historic shop fronts on the main street, most of which had been modified over the years. DWC was a trust established by the Government in 2001 to offset the loss of income from milling native timber on the coast.

Driven by a hard core of committed locals, the initiative was a response to two significant obstacles to a heritage-led revival: reluctance by lenders to invest in a town in decline; and a sentiment among some in the community that progress for Reefton would be about new buildings, not old ones.

The Reefton Distilling Co. has been a core business in revitalising the town.

PHOTO CREDIT: REEFTON DISTILLING CO.

The first challenge was answered when DWC provided a loan to the community group, which it then onloaned to individual business owners to ‘do up’ their 19th century buildings. When that first phase of restoration and repurposing proved successful, it set the tone.

“We found that as we stepped forward, other business owners said, ‘Right, I need to be part of this’,” noted Paul Thomas, a local heritage advocate and joint owner of the Broadway Tearooms and the restored 1873 National Bank. He described the DWC investment as a “leap of faith” in community-led economic development that paid off. “A few of us had a vision and drove really hard, and it gathered momentum.”

In recent years the cudgels have been taken up by businessman John Bougen, co-founder of Dress Smart, who has bought and restored several historic Reefton buildings. In 2018, Reefton-born Christchurch businesswoman Patsy Bass co-founded a high-end distillery and tasting bar in the restored 1870s Haralds General Store, with a range themed on Reefton’s pioneering characters.

At the same time, a variety of individuals and organisations, from the Department of Conservation to the Reefton Historic Trust, have collaborated on restoring landmark public buildings as well as historic infrastructure in surrounding areas, consolidating Reefton’s broader heritage appeal.

“Because we’ve worked collectively and achieved success, we’ve now got a thriving town where people want to remain and where others want to come,” said Thomas.

– By Matt Philp