Boutique living restored in Napier’s iconic Criterion Hotel

The Criterion Hotel building as it is today, shops on the ground floor, the Market St cafe to the left and upstairs the restored boutique hotel accommodation. Photo / Doug Laing

It fronted onto Emerson St, near where the now long-gone Centennial Archways would be built over the intersection with Hastings St.

It also had entrances and exits on Hastings St and Market St – which is now the name of the bar and eatery formerly the space of the hotel’s Public Bar, which, in the transformation of the licensed trade in Napier, became known as the Sportsman’s Bar and then The Cri Bar and Grill.

The hotel had a particular heyday in the late 1960s, when Hawke’s Bay’s rugby heroes would stand on the small balcony overlooking the two-lane Emerson St to watch the Saturday morning Ranfurly Shield parades, before alighting the bus for McLean Park to defend the trophy in the afternoons.

But there would also be more calamity, including two early-morning fires just six years apart.

The first, on September 18, 1984, caused about $700,000 worth of damage, according to reports at the time.

It was restored, the accommodation becoming backpacker lodgings, and was bought by Jeremy Bayliss, with hopes of creating a nightclub upstairs.

Those dreams might have appeared shattered when fire ripped through the two-storey building on the Sunday morning of November 4, 1990.

The Napier Daily Telegraph’s front page a day after the Criterion Hotel fire of November 4, 1990. Photo / Doug LaingPublican Jeremy Bayliss distributed teeshirts in 1991, celebrating the reopening of the bar and commemorating the fire that had gutted the hotel late in 1990. Photo / Doug LaingT-shirts in 1991 celebrated the reopening of the bar and commemorating the fire that had gutted the hotel late in 1990. Photo / Doug Laing

It started in the Sportsman’s Bar, and upstairs 39 people were evacuated from the backpackers quarters.

Two were injured, one fracturing a leg in a leap from a first-floor window above the corner of Market and Emerson Sts, and a fireman strained his back in trying to stop falling into the beer cellar in the darkness.

Nine shops in the building were also damaged, mainly by water and smoke, but one, a salon, was also gutted by fire, yet, standing amid the ashes, Bayliss, now host at Rogue Hop in Hastings St, was confident the building structure had not been comprised and the bars would reopen, which they did by the end of 1991.

As times and owners changed, the bar and eatery would, have tough times, eventually closing suddenly in early 2013, with the doors remaining shut for five years, although the Criterion Art Deco Backpackers continued operating upstairs.

With the bar reopened and the building bought by hotel and motel group Ectara Enterprises, proprietor also of the Pebble Beach, Shoreline and Beachfront motels on Marine Parade, plans were put in place for a restoration to bring back some of the glory of the past.

But it came in a future that would include the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, the November 2020 Napier floods, the February 2023 Cyclone Gabrielle and the economic downturn.

Architect Sol Atkinson led the project, and said it’s been an “odyssey”, but is satisfied they go as close as possible to restoring the accommodation to as near as possible to that of the 1930s.

The blackened scars from the fire, or fires, were still evident when the interior upstairs was stripped back to start the work.

Saini admires the subtle touches – such as door knobs, possibly 94 years old and original, with the letters “CH” moulded-in.

The “CH” door knob, a relic of the early days of Napier’s Criterion Hotel after it was rebuilt in 1931, and retained in 2026 in the restoration of its boutique accommodation. Photo / Doug Laing

She said the hotel was fully booked through the New Year’s Eve period, and is also fully booked for the Art Deco Festival on February 19-22.

Doug Laing is a reporter at Hawke’s Bay Today, based in Napier for most of the last 38 years, including with the Criterion Hotel just across the road.