The Chocolate Fish mystery

Radio NZ report:

A popular Wellington café said it will be forced to close next year after the property’s high-profile owner, Oscar-winning filmmaker Sir Peter Jackson, ended its lease as part of a wider redevelopment plan.

Jackson, best known for directing The Lord of the Rings films, purchased the historic Submarine Barracks property at Shelly Bay with partner Dame Fran Walsh in 2023.

At the time, the couple said they wanted to restore the area’s “natural beauty”.

This doesn’t add up. After the land was purchased by Jackson in 2023, The Post reported:

There are no plans to build a film museum on the site, long known to be an aspiration of Jackson’s. But they hope John and Penny Pennington, owners of the much-loved Chocolate Fish café, will return after the fire forced them out.

So Jackson explicitly said he wanted the cafe to reopen and remain.

Just a few months ago it was reported:

The celebrity, blockbuster-making couple are also bankrolling the renovation and extension of old submariners’ barracks which house the Chocolate Fish Cafe at Shelly Bay, north of the planned museum.

Considered by some to be the most important historic building within Shelly Bay, it was built in 1887 as part of an anti-submarine mining base following fears that New Zealand, then a British colony, might be attacked by the Russian navy.

Plans include a new lead-light windowed conservatory, a verandah, an expanded indoor seating area and a new sewerage system.

So the extensions were funded, it seems,. by Jackson and Walsh. The conservatory is almost finished and looks great. So what happened?

WingNut PM, the property arm of Jackson and Walsh’s WingNut Group, said there had been “occupancy discussions” with the cafe’s owners since 2024.

The redevelopment plan was intended to “reinvigorate the city and provide a public amenity for all Wellingtonians to enjoy”, the company said in a statement to the Herald.

“To deliver on the vision a complete refurbishment of the historic Submarine Barracks building that the Chocolate Fish Café presently occupies is necessary.”

The renovations would make it impossible for the café to continue operations beyond January and its owners had been offered support so it could remain open into the summer period, the statement added.

I’m sorry, but there is something we are not being told. You don’t close a business down for renovations. There are options such as a temporary kitchen. Or they could operate in Berhampore (as they did after the fire) for a few months and then reopen at Shelly Bay after the refurbishment.

Jackson and Walsh have the right of course to do what they want with their land. But the reasons for closing down Chocolate Fish just don’t add up. There is obviously more to this, than is being revealed. Maybe they have their own plans for the site?