It's been ten years since Palmerston North had a strip club, but on Friday, the wait is over.
Oksana Stewart, a 31-year-old ex-dancer will open Golden Dragon Girls at The New Railway Hotel and Newshub has the inside scoop on what the club will look like.
Stewart's club will be the first since Firecats closed down in 2010.
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The 31-year-old says the offer of a venue for her business started as a joke.
"I was approached by the owner [of the New Railway Hotel], and it started off as a joke. Some locals were sitting around the bar drinking and said he should hire me to do some topless waitressing,"
The suggestion stuck, and the owner ended up offering Stewart some space.
But there was a lot of work to be done.
"It was just one big room basically. And you need to have changing rooms, private rooms, and stag rooms, all that stuff. So we had to build in walls and pretty much put everything in from scratch,"
For its opening weekend the club will have fire shows, hula shows - and a champagne room complete with a spa pool.
Stewart says one of the more challenging aspects was installing the poles.
"I thought it would be easy to install poles! It wasn't - there's actually a suspended ceiling, so we had to get the guys to climb up and reinforce it into the actual ceiling," she said through laughter.
"Those only got finished last weekend!"
Stewart was a dancer for five years, retiring from the stage after she became pregnant in 2018, and turning to the business side of stripping.
"I started off as an agency in Manuwatu, so I'd hire girls out for stag parties and things like that," she told Newshub.
Stewart isn't one to shy away from hard work - despite being heavily pregnant she spent months renovating the space ready for her business.
"I was actually in labour painting the club. I thought it was just Braxton Hicks, and then my full labour kicked in," she told Newshub.
"I gave birth about five hours later, and I was back within three days."
Golden Dragon Girls will have a door charge and dress code, and will open Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights from 7pm to 2am.
Newshub.
