Osborne Lane in Newmarket. If you don’t know where this is it is a series of laneways recently created between the old light industrial areas bordered by Osborne St, Kent St, York St and Khyber Pass
Photos above are copyright to Sydney, one below are mine
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Osborne Lane is an excellent development. Really well done. Possibly because it a renovation rather than a new development.
Is Sugar Bar the little wine bar? Found this lane and bar by accident after a movie at Rialto. Awesome area and a nice little relax area in the city. Well done.
and the mix of architecture and colour makes the place really interesting to look at.
They have whisky and jazz Thursdays!!
My kind of bar. Not enough of them in Auckland. Oh, and the 2 times I’ve been in there the music was at levels where it was possible to have a discussion without yelling at the top of your voice. Imagine bars being social places where people talked? 🙂
Similar to Ponsonby Central and The Commons (Takapuna) in many ways. Very clever adaptation of otherwise very bland 1950 era buildings.
Probably effectively end up being land banking for a decade, before full redevelopment. But the great thing is these can pop up again a block away in another set of refurbished buildings.
Is this an overseas trend we have taken, or have we managed to invent a new trend in Auckland?
It is actually a trend all over the place, they do that already a while, good examples are Hells Kitchen in NYC, the Chelsea Market, The meat district in Chicago, the Gasometer in Vienna, the Messe in Munich, all of them are old and abandoned industry buildings or warehouses between late 18-hundrets and 1950ies converted to all sorts of nice spaces.
Bob Harvey redux; a sort of Newmarket version of his 1970s reworking of what was a rundown part of Parnell. Soft retail porn devoid of any sense of history; cosmetic rather than structural. Notwithstanding its PT accessibiliy and its car free design focus, Osborne ‘lane’ is still a parking dependent facility so it’s not actually an improvement just a slightly different albeit ersatz retail opportunity.
That was Les Harvey; no relation to Bob.
“Osborne ‘lane’ is still a parking dependent facility”
Excuse my french, but that is nonsense. It is between 50-100m away from some of the most concentrated public transport in Auckland, and is located in an area with a lot of people already there both during the day & the evening, so lots of opportunity to walk over for lunch, or for dinner from a nearby apartment.
This is turning out to be quite a nice little area, there’s three bars in the block where the lane is situated and a few more on the other side of Khyber Pass, a corner café on Kent/Osborne, the asian markets on the other side of Kent seems to always have people around (pity the ever-lingering fishy smell though), there’s no shortage of retail in the area, and there’s an arcade linking to Rialto and Broadway. Now, with the university going in at the brewery site not far from here, this area is only going to get more lively. Just bring on the Newmarket streetscape improvements on Teed, York, and Kent streets. The latter one especially is atrocious at the moment – and there’s no lack of space, as this is how it looks atm: http://goo.gl/maps/wuhiB
Parking buildings galore. Remove some on street parking. Make it parallel only to free up some footpath. Human scale.
Can’t agree more. Newmarket is littered with parking buildings and yet there is still masses of on-street parking. The on-street parking is unnecessary and is holding back the spread of true pedestrian amenity, to the detriment of the atmosphere and the retailers in the area.
Newmarket is one part of Auckland where there is huge scope for improved pedestrian amenity, it needs to happen sooner rather than later!
Again shame those streets were done just before shared spaces became a thing, would be well suited to being shared spaces.
You mean shame the Council buckled to whinging by a group of bullying over-entitled retailers who have no idea what urban form is best for their own businesses, nor any sense of their right to control the public realm.
Can’t agree more. Where is the vision and leadership from the Council/retail association/local board on this one?
Newmarket is crying out for a more pleasant streetscape, every time I go there I’m saddened by the missed opportunities. It has the boutique retailers and intriguing back street layout to contribute to building a unique, high-class atmosphere, why can it not have a streetscape to match? Surely the streetscape is the easiest part to achieve?
The Local Board is actually pushing for this area to be made more pedestrian & cycle friendly, in the mold of Osborne Street or better (it’s in their Local Board aspirations, and I know the Waitemata folks are quite serious about these things). But of course with us spending multi-mega millions on roads out to new sprawl developments, AT has jack-all money to give for such projects.
Yes I was at the Lone Star on Friday and, on the way from the train station, I was admiring all the little streets that welcomed pedestrians/cyclists and then turned the corner to see Kent Street – hideous. Easy fixes everywhere there but of course the businesses there will scream blue murder as for them no cars = no customers. 1960s thinking but that is where we are at in Auckland.
Wow, Buzz Killington right there.
Reminds me a bit of Poplar Lane and SOL Square in Christchurch pre-earthquake – retail on an intimate, pedestrian scale.
As pretty and nice as it appears in it’s present form, it is unsustainable and is doomed to have a revolving door of tenants until they finally find the right mix that works. Noticeably absent is a cafe down the lane on the Osborne Road side to draw people into the space and to get them to explore further.
The fact that they made 3 parking spaces at the entrance to the lane, is testimony to the sheer stupidity of either the developers or the rules that require such archaic requirements. The space occupied by the 3 cars could have been a “Britomart” lawn and more. Newmarket has great potential but it needs more than just a rectangular space being passed off as a laneway. Get creative, get colourful.
The design (and if I remember right, even the construction) of Osborne was done way before Britomart areas and the shared spaces. For its time in Auckland, I consider it actually as a bit ambitious. I mean – widening footpaths? Raised crossings to slow down cars? Wasn’t exactly in our standard design manual in the early and mid 2000s.