BNZ closing Rees St branch for ATM lobby

BNZ’s Queenstown CBD branch will shut its doors in four weeks’ time. PHOTO: PHILIP CHANDLER

After nearly 150 years, the Bank of New Zealand is moving out of Queenstown’s Rees St.

It is instead installing a 24/7 lobby and ATM in nearby Camp St, beside McDonald’s, leaving BNZ Whakatipu, at Frankton’s Five Mile, as its flagship Queenstown branch.

BNZ opened its first local agency in a canvas building in Ballarat St (now the mall) in 1862, about the time Queenstown was established, before shifting into a neo-classical building in Rees St in 1873.

The building was demolished in the early 1980s, making way for the present premises designed by Queenstown architect John Blair.

The BNZ building in Queenstown in the 1870s. PHOTO: ODT FILES

In recent times, this branch has only opened to the public two days a week.

A BNZ spokesman said customers were not visiting branches as much and a recent shift to reduced days was largely in relation to Covid-19, ‘‘but significant declines in customer visits have seen changes to operating hours over time’’.

It was reported last year an Auckland-based investor had paid $17 million for the Rees St building.