The Mt Hutt Function Centre is a modern, purpose-built venue at 160 Main Street in the centre of Methven, Mid Canterbury, incorporating the Mt Hutt Memorial Hall. It is within about an hour's drive of Christchurch International Airport, which makes a rural-village conference setting practical without a long transfer.
The centre has five different rooms, described by the operators as covering everything from meetings for three people, through weddings of 150 to 200, to conferences for up to 435. The Mt Hutt Memorial Hall itself seats 150 at round tables or 200 at trestle tables, has a sprung dance floor, and has a stage suitable for a band, DJ or presentation set-up. The adjoining function room is used for pre-dinner drinks and breakout sessions, with bi-folding doors that open onto a lawn area. The combination of a large hall plus smaller rooms means multi-day conferences can run plenary and breakout streams in the same building, along with the exhibition and sponsor space that usually requires.
The venue has on-site parking, accessible access, air conditioning and heating, free Wi-Fi and a full commercial kitchen. Published opening hours are 9.30am to 5.00pm, with function bookings by arrangement.
The centre is deliberately not aligned with a single caterer. Organisers can arrange in-house catering, engage any of the local cafés, restaurants or catering companies, or use the commercial kitchen to bring in an outside caterer or self-cater. An in-house conference and function coordinator can help with selecting local caterers and with table layouts, with organisers choosing how much assistance they want.
The Mt Hutt Memorial Hall is a multi-use facility that also houses the New Zealand Alpine & Agriculture Encounter, the Hall of Memories, the Mt Hutt Memorial Hall Art Gallery, the New Zealand Ski Heritage Museum, iHub Methven, the Mt Hutt Snow Centre and Methven Travel, along with community meeting rooms. For conference organisers that is a real point of difference: an on-site visitor attraction and art gallery that can be worked into a programme or a partner activity.
Methven has a range of accommodation within walking distance of the centre, which supports residential conferences without shuttle logistics, and the surrounding Mid Canterbury landscape — the Southern Alps foothills, Mt Hutt and the Rakaia River — supplies the off-site and incentive content.
Documented conference use includes the 2014 Deer Industry Conference, held at the centre with more than 200 attendees and live streamed from the venue.
Overall, a flexible and unpretentious regional venue best suited to conferences and functions of up to a few hundred people, gala dinners and community-scale events, and to organisers who want freedom over their catering and room set-up.
Capacity
Nearby listings on the MICE record — indicative only, not a recommendation unless marked Featured.