After seven years, the owners of the old Queenstown hospital are readying to open the doors of the former nurses' quarters as accommodation. Josef and Monica Toth have owned what was the West Coast District Hospital at 53 McNamara Street, Queenstown, for the better part of a decade and have now completed a number of upgrades. Mr Toth said their development application, which is seeking a change of use to visitor accommodation and is currently being advertised by the West Coast Council, is hopefully the last step before they can open the doors. He said among other improvements to the facility they have laid 250 square metres of new tiles and upgraded the bathrooms, and that guests will have private rooms with shared facilities. "People are really surprised when they walk in, it looks great," he said, adding that the views from the common area out over Queenstown are a particular highlight of the venue. "It's a million-dollar view." He said the process of upgrading the building had been more complicated than he and his wife had initially anticipated, particularly in relation to the number of necessary bureaucratic hurdles. "It's all coming together," he said. "It's not a race, but I didn't expect it to take so long." Mr Toth said he was not motivated by profits or to "become a millionaire", but believed that Queenstown was firmly on the path of becoming a tourist destination and he wanted to be a part of that. The old hospital's history was firmly a part of the town, and Mr Toth said the original groundsman, Anthony Crosswell, now in his 80s, was still tending to the gardens. Mr Toth said that Queenstown was now a town with a mine, not a mining town, and though he was optimistic Mount Lyell would reopen, he was excited about the West Coast Wilderness Railway, and the region's hiking and biking trails attracting potential guests. He said that even through recent winters post-COVID there had been quite a significant amount of interest from tourists in the town and wider West Coast. The development application can be viewed via the council website until December 11, and Mr Toth said they hoped to announce an opening date shortly after.