With the Hobsonville Motorway and its accompanying extension of the Northwest Motorway opening last weekend, a whole pile of land developments around northwest Auckland are likely to kick into action over the next couple of years. One major development will be a large employment centre, known as Massey North, located on land just to the north of the current Westgate Shopping Centre. Some details of the design of the area – and particularly that of the town centre – are outlined in the most recent meeting agenda for the Henderson-Massey Local Board.
At a broad overview level, here’s what planned for the employment part of the development:
Unsurprisingly there are good bits and bad bit to what’s proposed in my opinion. The first thing that stands out to me is the enormous amount of space dedicated to parking spaces. The totals are all added up in extremely small text at the bottom of page 9 of the agenda, too small for me to make out but clearly numbering in the thousands.
While it is frustrating to see so much land dedicated to parking, at least in the town centre part of the development the carparks should be largely hidden from sight behind the buildings for people travelling along the main streets in their cars or by foot. This is certainly a step up from Botany, where things look more like this:
Unfortunately as we shift further away from the town centre the “Botany disease” comes back again and we see parking lots on the streets with the buildings set back hugely – inevitably creating what will be a pretty horrible place to be.
On a brighter note, as I said things around the actual town centre seem to be a step up on the horrific job that we’ve generally done in recent times planning town centres (just look across the road at Westgate for every example of how not to create a town centre). Here’s more of a close up look at the area immediately to the north of the current Westgate centre:
Comparing the new town centre with the old one gives me a bit of hope that planners have learned something over the past 15 years. If you’re trying to create nice spaces, don’t make it so the carpark is the focus of attention! When I think of Westgate, I can’t think of anything else but its carpark – surely the most abysmal planning failure possible.
Within the town centre, it looks like there’s going to be quite a nice central square area, which will double up as a shared space:
An artist’s impression of the proposed square provides a bit more of an insight into how it will look – hopefully a little more vibrant though!
Overall I guess there are some good things and some bad things from these designs. The town centre layout and the design of the town square seem to be reasonably good – but once we get beyond this immediate area we somehow land back into typical Manukau City/Botany/Westgate suburban big-box hell with giant parking lots in front of big stores just ruining our urban environment.
Now I know we need to provide for this sort of activity somewhere, and this is perhaps a reasonably decent bit of Auckland to do just that. I only wish there was some planning rule which required all parking to be located behind buildings and hidden from the street.
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I can’t see any bike lanes or cycle paths on that map. Nor a bus stop. The town square is over a busy road. The shops facing that street will struggle due to the oversupply of shops in shopping malls. It looks like a cross between Cumbernauld and Porirua. It will be a god-awful place to be. It will need a few CCTV cameras, and the kids will be in hoodies for sure.
I think outer suburbia by a motorway exit is doomed to this kind of architectural vomit.
Hi Matt – I have seen the plans close-up, and they actually feature cycle lanes and paths both (though normally not both at the same time). I’d suggest that you just can’t see them at this scale. While not exactly a “cycling development” an above-average (compared to previous developments elsewhere) level of thought has been given to cycling.
I understand that the Hobsonville Road in that section of the town centre is also to feature Copenhagen Cycle lanes. Which is good, because as we can see in the Manukau Town Centre, no cyclists wants to ride next to six lanes of traffic.
I stand corrected about the “town square” being above the road. It has a road junction in the middle of it which will be busy as because of all the cars going to carparks. I’ve even found the bus stops. And the town square has the buses going through it too. It’ll need traffic lights.
It’s still got too many carparks.
“I stand corrected about the “town square” being above the road. It has a road junction in the middle of it which will be busy as because of all the cars going to carparks. I’ve even found the bus stops. And the town square has the buses going through it too. It’ll need traffic lights.”
My, are we on a downer today? If you look at the Local Board report and the section onf the square, you’ll see they are talking about how the bus traffic will work in/through the square, and that the bus station design is put on hold until they know. Buses and pedestrians need not conflict badly, as numerous European pedestrian malls with bus traffic show.
Also, if you look at the overview plan, you will see that the car park areas are accessed from OTHER streets, not from near the central square. Give them a bit of credit for knowing that large masses of cars and pedestrians don’t mix that well.
Blah is this really the best Auckland planners can do? My god it’s awful, who honestly think anyone would want to make their home in such a place unless forced to? It looks like the sort of development someone would build if they wanted to force more traffic onto the motorways in the area and thereby allow themselves to justify expanding the whole thing in 5 years time.
So in summary we’ve got a massive ‘town centre’ being planned at the intersection of two motorways with no form of PT that anyone would take unless they had no car and this is supposedly 2011. Why does anyone wonder why Auckland is a basket case and wedded to the car? How much ofour rates will be will wasted on building the roads for this?
It all looks a bit unfortunate. Do the architects (I presume) who design this type of development think people will really care about an extra minute or two of walking from their car to their destination? It seems that way.
agreed is much improved compared to Botany/Albany, but still hopeless.
Big issue I see is connection across SH16 to the existing mall development, no allowance for quality pedestrian connection. Also backs onto supermarket so will be big blank concrete wall.
Will the existing SH16/Hobsonville Road remain a State Highway? Needs to be downgraded to meet its new purpose which
is largely a local road serving the mall, so need to make allowance for pedestrians too.
Other problems I have is that the development is very insular. What usually happens with these is that a different developer will end up owning other parcels of land on the outskirts of the development, and that will have no connection with this development at all, other than a very wide road, with no though about how the whole town centre links up.
As I said above, Hobsonville Road in the plans I have seen is to get wide Copenhagen Cycle lanes, and wide footpaths. Admittedly, there seemed to be nothing like a big pedestrian bridge or something to cross what will remain a very wide (6-8 lanes) road even after it loses SH18 status (yes it will – all goes onto motorway then, even though still has a “state highway” text on it now). So people will have to cross at the lights.
A couple of points based on my understanding of it (could be wrong)
Now that the new motorway extension is completed I don’t see why Hobsonville Rd will remain a state highway, I think the whole road and the old SH16 from westgate to Brigham Creek has now been handed over to the council to look after.
Also I think that the same developer owns all of the land including the existing shopping area so there is unlikely to be the situation of another developer coming in and trying to do something different damaging the place.
Nothing on how this will integrate with the proposed Albany to Henderson RTN, I see…
Which thanks to the lack of PT funding is far far away anyway… also, the large-scale design of Westgate-Massey North has been going on for more than half a decade. Hard to change such things too significantly down the line, even if they wanted to. Certainly they are not going to change it for an RTN that nobody has any idea of whether it will be built before 20-30 years.
The local street network is good.
The council/developers are already at loggerheads with LTNZ over the lack of motorway connections. The planners also need to ask themselves why so many Westies (like my wife) head over to Albany to shop, and avoid Westgate and West City.
The first road linking the “old” Westgate to the new development (the current entrance for buses), should be bridged at Hobsonville Rd/SH16, to provide a safe route for buses, pedestrians and cyclists. Cars should be restricted to the Fernhill Dr entrance.
One of the attractions of the Westfield Albany mall, is that it is outward facing, especially the cafes with outdoor seating facing the lake. As far as I can see, Westgate completely misses the opportunity to incorporate any green space. The town centre would be greatly enhanced by having a “village green”, rather than a paved square (I think they’ve just copied the Lynn Mall plans from 1963?).
Having been involved with Westfield Albany, I’ll say thanks for the praise 😉
The town centre here seems to be mostly paved, but there are maybe 20% lawn area, and lots of trees! It’s not going be Station Square, Newmarket.
One would hope that by the time this happens, the thinking in regards to public transport provision in the area will have markedly improved.
The bus hub at the existing Westgate operated for more six months without so much as a simple sign saying “Bus Stop”. Timetables appeared a year later. Westgate’s owners moved a year or so back to impose Towaway restrictions to deter the small number of Park ‘n riders from using the car park.
The much trumpeted Hobsonville motorway work did not extend to establishing a bus lane on the city bound shoulder between Westgate and Royal Road. The space is largely there, and when traffic banks up the bus spends a long time queued up in traffic.
The new development also introduces to Westgate the dreaded Ramp Signal, which now delays peak-hour citybound bus services creeping down the onramp at Westgate, even in light motorway traffic.
Something is wrong when the carparking area takes up as much space as the buildings. Thats a hell of a lot of useless space in a large site like this. The green space is superfluous, it ring fences the whole development and its main purpose is to provide a buffer from the road. Who will want to use it when theres a huge carpark on one side and constant local traffic on the other. I guess underground carparking is too expensive?
Underground car parking is HUGELY expensive. The green space is not sueprfluous at all, if for no other reason that one CAN remove car parks and add more buildings in the future – ripping up a private building to add a larger park is much less likely to happen.
Also, the parkland follows the local (or the locally redirected) streams, so might actually be a quite pleasant environment to have a lunch time stroll from your office. I am not so negative about this thing at all.
I was looking at these plans the other day and I agree that it is a bit of a mixed bag, they aren’t going to get everything right but at least this is an improvement on the Albany/Botany/Manukau developments of the last 15 or so years. I like that even though there is mountains of parking, at least it is on the outside and that the town centre is together, I like the square surrounded by restaurants, shops and the library, I like the pedestrian mall.
What I don’t like is that the further north you go the more autodependant the area gets, also there seems to be very poor pedestrian connections to the existing Westgate shops.
Another thing is the council is now pushing for another interchange to be built on the new road just to the north of the area (on the right of the first image) they are trying to say that the development won’t succeed without motorway access even though is motorway access to Hobsonville Rd for all except those coming from Kumeu.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/transport/news/article.cfm?c_id=97&objectid=10743842
Which is hopefully why that idea will fizzle. Also, NZTA is VERY protective of their motorways (they hate having too many accesses), and won’t just simply cave in on this.
Yes, hopefully the NZTA keep telling them to piss off, there looks like there would be all sorts of problems with weaving etc.
Also just a quick search found this official site for the town centre including a more detailed map including being able to see the numbers of car parks provided. The scary thing is if I’m reading it right then for the town cetre they have only provided about half of what they should do as it indicates that for that size development they should have about 4000 carparks but they are only providing about 2200.
http://westgateshoppingcentre.co.nz/future
Nice find of the map, thanks. Well, the 5 car parks for 100 sqm is a typical shopping centre rate. Not a town centre rate. So not sure whether that should apply in the first place. Providing half means they go for an approximate 1/40 rate, which is almost moderate for Auckland levels.
However, note that the bluky goods areas actually go over these rates, closer to something like 1/30.
For me, the thing shows two aspects. A) this thing is HUGE (which should not be surprising – the current Westgate area is pretty big, and this is three times that and B) standard parking requirements are still RIDICULOUS in Auckland, even in supposedly “Eco” Waitakere City.
All in all, it is probably better for the locals to drive here, than to drive to Auckland CBD or Albany.
There’s also a lot of info on the old WCC site including some of the conditions which include zero setbacks from the street, requirements for the active edges of the buildings to ensure they don’t turn around to face the carparks, pedestrian features, pedestrian friendly features like verandas etc.
http://www.waitakere.govt.nz/abtcnl/pp/districtplan/districtplanchanges.asp#changefifteen
The opening of SH 18 surely allows Hobsonville Rd to get some serious bus priority so services between an improved transfer set up at Henderson Station and Albany taking in this huge project could be pretty good and frequent, you’d think?
seems ridiculous how all the nice parkland/greenspace will back onto the big-box stores.
And at the same time this green-space manages to totally cut these big-box stores off from the rest of the development, making it very difficult to walk between the two.
I would imagine they would be looking a getting a new bigger Warehouse and Farmers around here.
We really need to learn how to fit these large-format stores into a pedestrian friendly development.
Luke,
Could not agree more. That green space behind the big boxes is going to be terribly under-utilised and a grafitti strewn wasteland dare I say it. Surely the idea would have been to put all the stores closer in a more pedestrian friendly arrangement. Why do we need green space in the middle of a shopping complex? Who is going to use it?
Luke, the development is HUGE. It is in excess of 1.5km from the southern end to the northern end if you count the old Westgate. There’s limits to what 99% of the population will walk, especially for retail! Even as people supporting walking, we should not try to think that everything can be done by walking!
I also am surprised at the amount of negativity about the parks. Would you rather our new development areas were devoid of parks? These parks will be there for a long time (hopefully forever). They also work as riparian areas for the local streams. There is (I presume) development land to the west of these current town centre areas as well. This is just good future-proofing (and not all green space NEEDS humans – nature does very well without us, too). Also, the parks are pretty big, so could easily be a destination on their own (parents come to shop, and then have a walk and play with their kids – it’s supposed to be a town centre, not just retail heaven.
I wonder whether you folks would argue that all the other parks etc… that we enjoy in the middle of our town and cities right now were as stupid at the time they were set aside.
I think that more green space is good, you can see an improvement from the old scheme. But I have an issue with “parks” or strips of green just for the sake of them. What they’ve done here is just surround the development in green, much like what you see in the suburbs when a large house is plonked in the middle of the site and you’re left with small green spaces around outside that have little use for anything. People will not go to the mall and see a grassed area that sits alongside a ginormous carpark that looks out onto the local road and think gee I would love to use that space.
I also can’t see how the green areas work in with any streams. In the top-right corner I can see something that looks like a stream that is situated across a road from the development. If the developers were serious about working in with this stream, they would have consolidated all of the green areas into this top-right corner. This would have created a proper sized park that looks out onto the stream and would be a decent size so people could play sport or maybe contain a playground. You know a place where people would enjoy themselves, somewhere not hemmed in by the automobile.
1.5Km is a 15 minute walk, and that is fully from one end to the other. Most people would spend well in excess of this walking round malls etc. I dont think people mind walking if the environment is conducive to it.
Yes people always try to get the closest parking spot even for a 10 second walk – say at a supermarket. But I dont know that this is particularly rational behaviour – it is similar to people overtaking a car on a motorway that is going 90kph when they are within 1km of their offramp – it will save them seconds off their trip.
Swan, my point was that there ARE significant downsides to the idea co-locating the bulk retail stores with the rest of the town centre. Having to build car park buildings instead of at grade car parking, for starters. While that may reduce the visual impact and expanses of tarmac (IF the car park buildings are well-designed), the realities of development mean that it makes more sense to use the land you have. Mind you, I am not talking about the number of car parks, just about how and where they are spread out.
I am not too worried about it – we should be intensifying, yes, but not for the sake of intensifying. All in all, for a suburban retail development, this appears to be a good notch above the average to me.
This development is a perfect example of precisely why new roads induce traffic. A capital gains tax on land close to proposed new motorways would probably solve the problem of how to fund Auckland’s (and Wellington, Tauranga, etc) future transport needs. In fact, a combination of a capital gains tax and a gas tax was used to fund California’s State Highway system before the Great Depression, so the idea isn’t without precedent.
Kevyn, do YOU do your shopping bys bus or bicycle? Or even by walking? I don’t even OWN a car, yet I do my big grocery shops by loaning a friend’s car – and I am unlikely to use a cargo bike to buy a couch even if I had a cargo bike. As even admin (probably one of the most pro-PT people around) has correctly highlighted, in some places we need shopping easily accessible by car.
The northwest is one of Auckland’s fastest-growing population areas. Not only the areas you may already know of, but very large areas currently being opened up around Massey North, for tens of thousands of new residents. Do we WANT those people to drive all the way to Albany or St Lukes if they want to go to a large shopping centre area? Better for them to drive 3-5km than 15-20km. And Massey North isn’t going to just be built next year at the size these plans show – it will grow to this eventually, over many years.