In this spirit of last week’s post on the car-centric design of Botany Town Centre, here’s another bit of Auckland that seems to have been dedicated entirely to the parking of cars. Strangely enough, the area is actually superbly served by public transport (which should be a bit of a clue about where it is).
I am a bit more hopeful about this spot than I am about Botany town centre. One would hope that in the not too distant future this would be a fantastic opportunity for a really public transport oriented high-density mixed-use development.
This is why I think planning rules really do need to limit the provision of parking.
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North Shore!!! Its my hood. Smales Farm. Its near the Northcote off ramp, and the busway is right next door with a station.
Really? All that parking for that wee little building?? Though from memory that building is about 5 storeys high – at least – when I whip past on the motorway.
Marwan is right, this is Smales Farm. There are other buildings just out of picture, but the amount of parking is still obscene. I reckon 90% of the site must be dedicated to parking. What a waste of valuable land.
One only hopes that there’s a comprehensive master plan for the site that seeks to reduce parking provision as much as possible so people are encouraged to use the fantastic busway station on their doorstep. If you lived on this site in an apartment you would be a mere 15 minute commute from the CBD via the busway.
From what I heard, there was a dispute between the original owners of the land (Smales family) and the north shore city council, or its predecessor. As a result the family have done something to ensure the land is not allowed to be intensively developed so it remains inefficiently used.
That’s such a shame if that is true. The land is very ripe for further development. It’s strategically located and well served by both public and private transport! I’m hopeful the Auckland Council will sort this kind of development out, or at least prevent any future ones.
I like how completely inaccessible to people the water features are…
To be fair, when Smales Farm was first being developed the public transport accessibility really was woeful. I worked at TelstraClear (just after it became TCL, in fact) briefly at the very end of the 90s and there’s no way that public transport was a realistic option for the vast majority of employees. The carpark used to be nearly full, and that’s back when there was just the TCL building on the site. How much development has occurred here since public transport got a kick in the pants?
What function do the giant roundabouts serve? You could plonk a couple of office blocks (lots of employment) or even a nice park for workers to ahve their lunch in the space lost .
I swear the people who design these things must think they look pretty from the air, unfortunately they look horrible from the ground.
Ironically that is the former headquarters of Toll Rail, built in the only region of Auckland without any rail!
A time will come when no commercial landlord can justify having all that space occupied by carparking, over time the I’m sure they will redevlop that site with more people friendly buildings (and no doubt plenty of parking buildings).
I was going to say the Albany park and ride…
That roundabout on the right almost looks big enough to have a game of Cricket on.
Even stranger still, I just realised from looking at it that the inside and outside of it are parking spaces.
What’s funny is that this photo was clearly taken on a weekend and all that land is being wasted for 2/7ths of the time.
The ’roundabout’ on the right is just a circular car park for the semi-circular TelstraClear building.
One does get the feeling that sometimes the designers and architects get too absorbed in what their plans look like from a birds eye view, and forget to consider what it actually looks like to anyone without a blimp or light aircraft at their disposal!
Another thing to consider is how god dammed hard it would be to actually use the busway station with all that parking there. The distance from the station to the TelstraClear building on the extremes of the picutre above is only the distance from Britomart to Vulcan Lane, but it would take you for ever!
Could always build a railway from Britomart to Smales Farm, and turn the whole place into the North Shore’s #1 Park ‘n Ride.
Round-a-bouts are actually really useful in function, so are not there to just look pretty. However, that function is purely for the road user, and not very pedestrian friendly. I could see the logic at the time though, as when all this was created Public transport links were sh*t to say the least. So they had to cater for the car, now Public Transport has improved, you would assume some of these parking area’s would be ideal for intensification, not more car parks but more commercial and residential type buildings.
If I were designing the intensification, I would keep the round-a-bouts as architectural features, to remind people what the areas used to represent before public transport. They would be great features of the development.
The street network is actually there to create quite a nice little town centre. Just we need big buildings instead of surface parking.
On the bright side, at least this is not full of large-format retail or something more permanent. It should be fairly easy to turn this area into a great high-density employment and living node.
I still can’t find Wally 🙂