There were two big bits of development news yesterday.
The first was that the University of Auckland confirmed that they were buying the former Lion Brewery site in Newmarket as part of their plans to consolidate their operations in the central city. Here is their press release:
The University of Auckland’s plans to acquire the 5.2ha former Lion Breweries site have been given the go-ahead, paving the way for a new campus in Newmarket.
The landmark decision by The University of Auckland Council, effective 31 May 2013, follows a comprehensive due diligence process. The purchase marks the beginning of a long-term development of the site, spanning a 30 year timeframe, to create a mixed use campus, with purpose-built teaching and research facilities, student accommodation, business development and other facilities.
“Without a doubt, this is an exciting and significant development for the University, the Newmarket community and Auckland City,” says Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stuart McCutcheon. “Our researchers already actively collaborate with industry and the location of the new campus will further enhance our business relationships and benefit the local community.
“The Newmarket Campus will join the City and Grafton campuses to create an integrated campus cluster, supporting long term growth enabling the University to deliver to Auckland and New Zealand the full benefits of a multi-disciplinary, world-ranked research university.”
There is already a comprehensive public transport network of bus and rail routes servicing the area, which will greatly facilitate rapid movement between the three campuses.
Work will begin on demolishing many of the old brewery facilities when the University takes possession of the site in June. The first projects to be undertaken on the Newmarket site will be the total refurbishment of some existing buildings to provide for greatly enhanced engineering research space, and the construction of a new civil structures hall, including a nine metre strong wall (one of the largest in Australasia).
Further developments on the Newmarket campus will be staged as demands for new facilities arise and will be delivered in the context of a framework plan already developed for the site by Jasmax and Architectus Architects; this will ensure the University creates a coherent and pleasant campus environment for its staff, students and visitors.
Professor McCutcheon says “Over time we anticipate relocating activities from the Tamaki and Epsom campuses to the City/Grafton/Newmarket location. The timeframe over which this relocation occurs is yet to be determined, but ultimately this is expected to result in a significant reduction in our total landholdings.”
The comment about the site having strong PT links is interesting and these links will only improve as the CRL is built. It also makes the decision to build an east facing link on the CRL, instead of the inner west interchange a no brainer, something we have discussed before. Further, reading through some of the material regarding the decision, it highlights perfectly that they see huge benefits from agglomeration. This is also one of the key reasons we should be building the CRL.
In 10-15 years when we reached capacity at City and Grafton, we would have had to further split the University to accommodate space requirements. This would have involved either whole faculties, or parts of most faculties, moving to Tāmaki. Both of these options would have limited our ability to achieve the full benefits of a comprehensive integrated research university. The Newmarket campus, by contrast, offers long term growth potential close to the City and Grafton campuses.
The location of the Newmarket campus provides the University with an opportunity to ensure long term integration of our activities across the main campuses.
The second piece of news comes from New Lynn where the council has granted resource consent for the construction of the Merchant Quarter Condominiums which are located right next to both the train station, Lynnmall and now a medical centre. We have previously covered what is going on in New Lynn, including these apartments here. Here is the press release from the council:
Aucklanders are embracing options being offered in quality, compact and affordable housing as West Auckland’s first high-rise apartment building is given the go-ahead.
Auckland Council has granted resource consent for a 10-storey residential tower above the new Merchant Quarter building in New Lynn – with work expected to start this month.
With prices starting at $250,000, the 110 one and two-bedrooms apartments offer an affordable choice for Aucklanders looking to buy their first home.
“Aucklanders respond rapidly when they are given the opportunity, “ says Mayor Len Brown. “More than half the apartments have already been sold in this building, which offers people affordable options close to great transport links, community facilities, cafes, restaurants and shops.”
“New Lynn is showing the rest of Auckland what a vibrant, compact city can look like, and it’s looking very good indeed. The Merchant Quarter is New Lynn’s new heart where people can live, work, do business, shop and be entertained.”
The apartment complex being built by Tasman Cook will go above the council’s new five- level McCrae Way public carpark building in the new Merchant Quarter.
The carpark will continue to operate during construction because Auckland Council future-proofed it to enable residential development and therefore minimise disruption.
“We expect the rest of the apartments to sell incredibly quickly once construction starts,” says Tasman Cook Director Leonard Ross. “Interest has been very high and once people see the crane on site they’ll want to be in on the action.”
That also means the remaining carpark building’s retail spaces will be snapped up, adds Infratil’s Development General Manager Andrew Lamb. Infratil is the council’s partner in the Merchant Quarter development.
The Merchant Quarter development is part of Auckland Council’s transformation of New Lynn into a vibrant metropolitan centre to deliver the aspirations of the Auckland Plan.
It is also an excellent example of the model and approach for a more compact city detailed in the council’s proposed Unitary Plan.
“New Lynn is Auckland’s poster child for brownfields’ development and shows how inner city living can be created in town centres such as New Lynn,” says Deputy Mayor Penny Hulse.
The New Lynn tower offers panoramic views of New Lynn and the Waitakere Ranges with the west facing apartments proving the most popular with buyers.
The tower builds on a number of projects already delivered in New Lynn including the award-winning transport interchange, the Clark St extension and the Merchant Quarter. As well as the new carpark, the latter features a new medical centre and an upgraded McCrae Way, Auckland’s newest shared space street and New Lynn’s second. Auckland Transport has also upgraded Great North Rd and Delta Ave.
The apartment tower is expected to be finished early next year.
This announcement was covered by both TVNZ and TV3 including an interview with one of the owners to be.
As mentioned in one of the stories, roughly half of the apartments have already been sold. I just happened to be at New Lynn yesterday and while the temporary sales office was closed, I took a photo of the sales board through the window. Each red dot represents a sale.
There really seems to be a bit of a buzz back in the city about new developments and I get the feeling that things are really about to take off.
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Both are great developments.
The medical centre at New Lynn will offer far more services than a standard GP practice, and is an example of the benefits of intensification in terms of providing integrated care to more people – in line with the government’s ‘Better, Sooner, More Convenient’ health aspiration.
http://www.nzdoctor.co.nz/in-print/2012/march-2012/28-march-2012/new-lynn,-new-face-of-general-practice.aspx
Looks like you have to have a login to view that link
This is the article: https://www.dropbox.com/s/08ycv41h71tmdbe/newlynn.pdf
Sort of reminds me of Sydney in the late 1970s when the first big apartments started going up in Potts Point. Of course, big apartment buildings have been going up in Sydney since 1915 (as indeed they were in Auckland) but this was a sea change approach following a period when such a way of living had been condemned as ‘un-Australian’ and ‘un-healthy’. Thankfully it seems we’re doing it better, ie not demolishing what’s left of the city’s built heritage; and, hopefully, not indulging in the same level of corruption. It’s good to see!
There is little left to demolish!
Looks okay. Like the fact that the car parks seem to come un-bundled with the apartments – take em or leave em.
If the New Lynn car parks are unbundled, does that mean that they are on a separate title, in which case the owners probably have to pay an extra Uniform Annual General Charge each year.
If someone was buy an apartment with a CV of 420k, they’ll have to pay about $1601 in rates (including the $350 Uniform Annual General Charge), then if they buy two carparks with CV of 35k they will have to
pay about $452 for each carpark (including additional $350 Uniform Annual General Charges). Total rates: 2506 p.a.
If they had bought a different apartment with CV of 490k with two car parks as auxiliary units instead of separate titles, they would only have to pay about 1806 p.a. in rates (only one UAGC).
Otherwise they could have bought a house for 728k with two car parks in the driveway, and still only have to pay 2506 p.a.
This doesn’t sound like a fair system to me.
My mother has a carpark in an adjacent building in the city, and pays a separate rate on it… fiddly, but how else should it work? Which reminds me, anyone want to rent a carpark right next to Britomart [I know, I know]. We stole her car keys and flogged off her car some time ago- she had become a danger to herself and others!
I really like the idea of carparks unbundled with the apartments to allow flexibility, and it’s not the paying of rates based on a percentage of CV that I object to, it’s having to pay multiple Uniform Annual General Charges when the the carpark.
http://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/Plans/LongTermPlan/VolumeThree/section_1341865891587.html has provisions for charging only one Uniform Annual General Charges when sections are contiguous, but what if the apartment and carpark are not contiguous properties?
I’m in favour of having more separately titled carparks as it allows people to buy and sell carparks as their needs change, however there should be a simple way to link the title of the carpark to the title of the residential unit similar to a auxiliary unit, but in a non-permanent way.
Perhaps a simple form that says “I would like to link this rating unit to this other rating unit temporarily (until further notice)”. That would allow the flexibility to unlink and sell your carpark in the future, as public transport gets better and people don’t need that second car that they currently have.
Wouldn’t it be far simpler to just not charge the Uniform General Charge on carparks?
Not charging the Uniform General Charge on carparks. That would be too simple 🙂
I guess carparks are not SUIPs (separately used or inhabited part of a property), as you can’t inhabit a carpark, and you wouldn’t separately use a seperately titled carpark, it would always be attached to an office or apartment.
Aren’t they sometimes exactly a SUIP? My mother’s certainly is, it’s in a separate building, and certainly not inhabited.
Depends on the definition of “separately used”. My reading of it is when a single rating unit has multiple separately used parts. In the example, there is a there is a florist business and a souvenir business, on a hotel premises then the rating unit will be treated for rating purposes as having three separately used or inhabited parts.
“Where two or more contiguous properties are owned by the same person or persons, and are used jointly as a single unit, the ratepayer will be liable for only one uniform annual general charge.”
For your mother’s carpark, you have Multiple Non Contiguous Rating Units Used Jointly As A Single Unit (MNCRUUJAASU). I think we should be encouraging many more MNCRUUJAASUs, and ideally you should just have to fill in the MNCRUUJAASU form.
MNCRUUJAASU is the most awesome bureaucratic acronym I have yet to encounter.
Parodic. Fully.
At the moment you have to write a letter to the council and make a request for an exemption, as per the policy for remission of rates on car parks page 23 or policy for remission of rates in miscellaneous circumstances on 24 of Volume 6.5: Funding impact statements (including rating mechanisms). Send it to Auckland Council, Private Bag 92300, Victoria Street, Auckland 1142, then wait a 10 weeks, chase them up on the phone, stay on hold for about 45 minutes, have a chat, and then they’ll get back to you and confirm you have an exemption. (Or at least that’s what worked for me, just got the confirmation).
As long as they are in the same building, or just over the road, you should qualify for the exemption. Once you have the exemption, it applies until you sell.
Is there any potential for a direct link between the new campus and Grafton Station?
That link already exists – the station’s eastern stair egress abuts the Lion site.
Ideally, they would add an elevator there, and maybe in the long run they would need to consider whether that single stair is going to cut it – but the direct access is already there.
Look forward to seeing some details on the plans for the brewery site. I hope they build lots of good connections between Carlton Gore Road and Khyber Pass Road.
Do they HAVE any ability to connect to Carlton Gore? There’s no side roads there except Kingdon, and I am not sure they also bought the Lion Brewery’s one building north of the rail line (which is also close to Kingdon anyway)…
Can’t wait to move into my cbd apartment at the end of next month after having sold my place in the suburbs today. Glad to have the housing type options. As the New Lynn couple said, will be close to services, rail, not stuck in a car.
Funnily enough, I am about to do the reverse. But at least the place I am aiming for still is within 800m of rail, and even closer to the Northwestern Cycleway…
I hate to be a dark cloud, but a cursory glance at the New Lynn apartments shows they repeating the basic mistake that seems to curse all apartments in Auckland – many of them are still far to small for New Zealand tastes. I don’t care if they’d be a hit in Hong Kong or Helsinki, in this country I feel the minimum size (not including the balcony!) HAS to be in excess of 50 square metres for a one bedroom unit and feature a PROPER balcony for outdoor living. Why anyone would want to live in a tiny apartments is beyond me, and I like living in inner Auckland (Kingsland). Until we can work out how to build reasonably sized apartments at affordable prices, these apartment buildings will slip back into largely rental units with little capital appreciation and of little or no use to families and seen as second rate rabbit warrens for second rate buyers.
You’ll be please to know then that the one bedroom apartments start at 47m2 and some are as large as 89m2. 2 Bedroom apartments start at 75m2 and go up to 92m2
the 47m2 will include a small balcony, presumably with enough room for a small table a couple of chairs – which in no way negates my post. However, I do see they are all double glazed, a welcome and common sense improvement! All we need now is proper sound-proofing and air-con!
I (kinda) disagree – agree that larger apartments are often needed. But smaller apartments are ALSO needed. We don’t know how many small ones vs large ones are available here, because we don’t have a split they are running with (or any layout plans, which is a bit weak for an advertising website).
Agreed on the lack of detail. Does anyone know if any research has been done on at what ratio of owning-to-renting in apartment buildings they become in danger of of losing value for owner/occupiers?
huh? What does that mean? If you have to many owner occupiers the value decreases? To be honest NZ’s issue is the fact that too many people speculate in the property market. In Germany it’s quite normal to rent your whole life and they have a far better housing stock range, quality and price points than NZ, or Auckland, could ever dream of.
What I mean is if to many apartments are rented then the entire building starts to become rundown and loses value for the owner/occupied units. Germany heavily subsidies the cost of construction of houses, a hangover believe or not from the Nazi era when the Nazis made a priority (like many 1930s, post depression governments) of doing something about modernising the working classes housing stock from the run down nineteenth century slums many were living in. Germany also has much better tenancy laws than New Zealand.
Mind you, tenancy laws are the elephant in the room if we really wish to encourage a high density renting culture in Auckland.
Sanctuary – I kinda see your point. My building is about 50/50 for owner-occupiers, and it helps to ensure the building is seen as a long-term investment and home, rather than a money machine handled by various “meh” property managers for the tens or hundreds of investors that might own the units in, say, a Nelson Street block.
I’d like to hear more about your feelings on tenancy laws, Sanctuary. I presume the key issue you have is the very quick ability to turf someone out, even if they have lived in a place for years and years?
I don’t really have an informed view on tenancy laws, I am sure there is a housing expert who reads these forums who is better informed than I am who hopefully favour us all with an opinion! However, from what i have read on the subject, it seems that overseas laws usually include strict rules governing rent rises/stablisation and security of tenure. I think that if people knew that after, say, 3 or so years in the same place they had some security of tenure against a landlord arbitrarily deciding to move them on (for a capital gain by sale for example) then not only would this act as an additional tool against property speculation but it would also mean long term leases and short term renting would become much safer and secure and generally enhance renting as a first choice option for families.
I’m no expert, but just a few thoughts. I realise there’s a popular belief that tenants are disadvantaged under the Residential Tenancy Act, a belief fostered by the MSM, but the reality is that it’s fairly well balanced, although if anything biased somewhat against the landlord. Tenants must be given 90 days notice under a periodic tenancy, less if required for the landlord’s or landlord’s family’s own use, but this must be real and not an artifice. A lot can go wrong in 90 days!
As for periodic vs fixed term, both are available and I always invite the tenant to choose – 95% choose periodic as they can give 3 weeks notice which usually leaves the landlord with a gap as it’s not long enough to advertise and vet prospects, although rental demand has been fairly high in recent years in Auckland. The few that choose fixed term generally go for one year because they have plans for buying or increasing family size or whatever, which is fair enough. However, the rules now require either party to specifically confirm the expiry date between 90 and 21 days of expiry, otherwise it reverts to periodic. This can be a trap for careless landlords.
NZ of course has a culture of home ownership – I suspect primarily because other forms of investment are so risky; look what Shearer/Norman have just done to certain company values, or at the finance company rorts over recent years. Rent fixing would kill rental investment overnight, so would hardly further the cause of the pro-rental lobby.
Capital gain on apartments and commercial property is much lower than on conventional housing, which is another disincentive to invest in rental apartments. Commercial property generally has a higher yield – the bottom line is that yield plus capital gain together must lead to a reasonable return, otherwise why bother with the hassles?
I’d be quite happy for there to be no more market appreciation of properties in Auckland, the expectation that they’ll constantly increase in value and allow people to make massive profits is what is wrong with the market in Auckland.
Furthermore, if you don’t like living in an apartment, fine, but that’s completely besides the point, no one is asking you to. However, there are many more people who would like to live in an apartment than there are apartments available. And I guess if we’re not careful and build too many apartments we could slip into becoming somewhere terrible like, I don’t know, Zurich or Vancouver, or one of those other countries that consistently have the highest standards of living in the world and paradoxically (to people like you) have very large numbers of apartments and terraced housing.
Or even worse… Vienna!!!
Ranked the worlds most liveable city and with a lot of affordable housing as well as excellent PT and cycling infrastructure. The horror!!
Different horses for different courses.
I really enjoyed living in Houston. Very affordable housing (impressive considering it’s booming) & the freeway system is fantastic!
So you wouldnt like to live in Vienna? Have you ever been there? It is an awesome city and highly ranked always for quality of life. I havent seen Houston on any of those rankings.
I havent been to Houston but to me it sounds like the 8th level of Dante’s hell.
Does anyone know what the earthworks currently being undertaken by Hawkins out the front of the University of Auckland business school building in Grafton valley are for? That area has always seemed like it could be put to good use – maybe it finally will be?
It’s the formation for the Grafton Gully cycleway which will run along the motorway up to upper queen street.
I do think the cycleway is a good use but to be quite frank you could fit several large condos in this area and still fit the cycleway and yet it’s just going to be left empty. But it’s a huge piece of land and shows really how much land NZTA owns in central Auckland that is currently being left to sit idle despite government rhetoric that we’ve run out of space for developing. How about they look at the land they themselves are letting sit as a garbage dump.
Hi bbc – don’t mention it, but NZTA like to retain some land down there for any future links to the port which might run differently from what is done now.
On a more positive note, I understand that NZTA has recently plan-changed some quite sizeable land sections near Wellesley Street East / Grafton Street, so they can sell them off for use.
Yeah I was aware that was on the cards, it wouldn’t even be necessary if the money was instead spent on building a rail link to Marsden (which would be considerably cheaper than further destructive intercity motorways) It would also have the positive benefit of stoping PoA’s calls to fill in the rest of the harbour.
On a related note CAA were luckily on the game and made sure land needed for any cycling facilities that will hopefully be built across Wellesley Street can – NZTA basically planned to sell everything making any future cycle link impossible. They do of course have no problem holding onto land indefinitely for a motorway that hopefully never happens.
Is a new entrance to Newmarket station from the Broadway / Khyber Pass intersection still on the cards? I would have thought that would be a access point for the new campus.
There’s supposed to be an entrance as part of the the Broadway Junction development slightly north – http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2012/12/06/broadway-junction-development/
Mmmh, interesting point, Cameron – didn’t think of students coming of trains stopping at Newmarket. The walking environment along Khyber Pass would really require some sprucing up between Crowhurst Street and Broadway (and ideally, removing car parking along at least one side to be able to, gasp, widen the footpath!).
Could an engineer (?) explain what a “nine metre strong wall” is?
Apparently it’s one of the largest in Australasia…