Kāhu Youth Centre fitout

We returned to Paetara Aspiring Central, a youth and community hub we converted from a Mitre 10 store in 2023, to fit out an area for local charity Kāhu Youth. The 256sqm area now has offices and meeting area for the Trust staff and assorted spaces for Wānaka youth, including a games room, soundproof music studio, study area, kitchen/pantry, craft area and reading nooks.

Kāhu Youth Centre is an excellent example of our team pulling out all the stops for a project with a purpose. We worked closely with the client on a six-month value engineering process, undertaken free of charge, to bring the cost down to align with their budget but still deliver on their vision. We also completed the work as quickly as possible to reduce the time they needed to pause their programmes, staging the work so they could keep using parts of the area.

The fun, functional space received the ultimate accolade from rangatahi at the opening party, with comments including “Everything is awesome!,” “It’s perfect” and “Best place ever.”