{"id":16559,"date":"2026-02-11T09:10:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T20:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=16559"},"modified":"2026-02-11T09:10:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T20:10:11","slug":"aucklands-international-convention-centre-finally-opens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=16559","title":{"rendered":"Auckland&#8217;s international convention centre finally opens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The New Zealand International Convention Centre opened its doors for the first time.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s been almost 13 years since the government announced the deal for\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/577750\/long-delayed-international-convention-centre-formally-handed-over-to-skycity\">SkyCity to build the Centre<\/a>\u00a0in Auckland in exchange for an extension of its gambling licence and permission for an additional 230 slot machines.<\/p>\n<p>Construction has been mired in delays, partly caused by the 2019 roof fire that took more than 10 days to extinguish.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/business\/580528\/auckland-s-new-convention-centre-to-bring-million-dollar-boost-to-economy\">The finished building<\/a>\u00a0can fit more than 4000 people, and has been projected to contribute about $90 million a year over the next three years.<\/p>\n<p>At the opening, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told reporters it was an exciting day, and the convention centre showed the government is building a &#8220;world class New Zealand&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>He said the centre was likely to bring in more than the forecast $90m.<\/p>\n<p>rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New Zealand International Convention Centre opened its doors for the first time. It&#8217;s been almost 13 years since the government announced the deal for\u00a0SkyCity to build the Centre\u00a0in Auckland in exchange for an extension of its gambling licence and permission for an additional 230 slot machines. Construction has been mired in delays, partly caused [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":16560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16559"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16561,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16559\/revisions\/16561"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}