Hard not to agree with the the agent quoted in the Herald commercial property section “that there’s no doubt this is Auckland city’s stellar building site”. The double fronted site, facing both lower Shortland St; long Auckland’s grandest commercial address, and onto the old beach front of Fort St, commanding an uninterruptable view down Commerce St to the sea, is now even more valuable because of the upgrades to the surrounding public realm. A fantastic site in a much improved downtown. But for the last 25 years it has one of the city’s more regrettable ‘parking craters‘.
This is even more the case as it is slowly getting surrounded by shared spaces [it’s directly opposite O’Connell St currently being rebuilt]. Parking generates traffic movements so it is utterly mad if, as it is rumoured, the Council have consented a parking building for this site. Does one end of the Council not understand what the other is doing? Increasing adjacent parking supply is totally inconsistent with the spread of Shared Spaces and the other public realm improvements. Instead the lower Shortland St and Fort St area should be high on the Council’s list for parking removal.
Once home to the city’s other paper, the Auckland Star, and a centre of frantic activity as each of the three daily editions of the paper were distributed directly from the ground floor presses on Fort St. The upper floors also supplied most of the drinkers at the Vulcan Lane pubs and of course the De Brett’s Corner Bar just across Shortland St. Well certainly many of the more colourful ones- editorial deadlines for even the late edition closing by 3pm meant the writers were free to pursue their own ‘research’ pretty early in the day.
Weakened by the rise of television Star owner NZ News was acquired by corporate raider Brierley Investments Ltd who demolished the the building in 1989. It has been a car park ever since, just like the Royal International site on Elliott St, and of course the ‘parking stump’ on the other side of Shortland St. Amazing that 25 years later the city still bears the scars of the carnage wrought by that regrettable phase.
What a fantastic opportunity for a really high quality new building, one big enough to repair the broken built ‘cliff face’ on both Shortland and Fort Streets but also to include a grand atrium at the Shortland St level encompassing both elevations to connect the High St and Britomart areas together. Bringing more people and business into this critical and increasingly urbane part of the Central City.
We really need the Council to fully front up to its stewardship role with its whatever any private owner proposes on important city sites like this one and the others now barren because of the earlier neglect of duty by previous City Councils, especially in the cowboy years of the 80s and 90s. They are important opportunities for the future of the city, all decisions taken on these issues have very long lasting consequences. Parking is simply not an acceptable use for such an important site.
More detailed property information on this and nearby even larger site at 28 Customs St in this NBR article both are on the market.
Photograph [undated] by the Burton Bros of Dunedin, from Te Papa’s online collection.
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Cannot understand how there is desire, let alone potential permission to build a parking building here. Would have though it was premiere retailing and office space. Close to Britomart and on Fort St, forming part of what would be a massive Shortland St office cluster including some very large buildings. There are also a lot of historic building nearby unlikely to ever be demolished so limited chance of their views being ‘built out’.
I would have thought some bright spark would design a building in there to have a mixture of retail, parking for the tenants, additional parking just as you can add a few more layers, (road access from both roads?) then office space on top. Fairly much the same as the Metropolis was designed.. (but with a bigger foot-print)
Well any bright spark who proposes vehicle access from Shortland St should be sent back to the drawing board by Council, in my view.
Nooooooo…. What moron would consent a parking building for this site!
And +1 to Sailor Boy’s comment, I too would have thought that this is ‘premiere retailing and office space’. A mission critical development site on the journey toward establishing Auckland as a high quality and economically competitive international city.
Auckland only needs one large office building per year. While the Council pulls developers to Wynyard, this site will remain unsalable (except as a car park). The maths is simple, and with current Council policies, new development will continue to spread westward, away from Britomart, and away from future CRL stations. Demand for CBD office space is too small to build both areas at the same time. The big four banks are now locked into long leases, and the Lumley takeover could free up more prime space. It is interesting that Precinct have yet to announce an anchor tenant for their Downtown tower.
True, and that’s been the case for quarter of a century, which is why it is such a mistake that these buildings were allowed to be demolished, especially as the government subsidises auto-dependant suburban office parks with its dispersive motorway building. But if you are implying that the CRL is somehow a poor project because of the growth of Wynyard then your math is a bit bung. Even once Wynyard is fully developed mid town will still have many more desks and beds. Anyway by then Wynyard will require it’s own rail station on the North Shore route, which will be anchored by Aotea Station at the heart of the city, on the CRL.
Patrick, I totally support CRL. If anything, I think Wynyard development should be delayed until it gets its own rail station. PT and growth should go hand in hand, not PT following 10 years behind the growth.
Working in WQ is great on days like today with the grand total of 2 (two) bus routes heading this way.
Days like today shows the advantage of underground rail.
Ae!
I dont know if that is right, at least when it comes to A grade premium space (whcih any new office building should be): http://www.nzherald.co.nz/property/news/article.cfm?c_id=8&objectid=11200148
I have been to a few presentations recently on commercial property and Auckland generally has a shortage of good quality central city office space. Unlike Wellington which has a high vacancy rate.
The real estate agents may talk up a shortage, but there is no obvious large tenant that the banks demand before a building start. The smaller guys will have heaps of space when Precinct’s Downtown tower is finished. It has taken Precinct 5 years to fill Zurich House, and that cost their management company their job.
Yes all the big banks have recently re-housed: BNZ to Deloitte, ASB to Wynyard, Westpac to Britomart, ANZ stayed put, but renovated on Albert… Kiwibank? are they big, or just in Welly still?
Fun fact: No1 and No2 Queen St, the gates to the city across from Queens Wharf, are both now occupied by Chinese banks; HSBC at No1, and a new one to NZ, ICBC [only the world’s largest bank] on the ground floor of No2.
We did part of the fitout for ICBC,seriously high end stuff too.
Who owns the land, and what is causing the owner to use the land for such low-value use as parking?
Ironically, it’s used for a low-value use because it’s so valuable. The site’s being land-banked. When it does finally get built, it’ll be a 30+ storey tower, so the owners are going to be waiting until the market is in a position where that’s viable.
I’d have to agree with Patrick, though – a shame to tear down the old building unless you’re sure you’re ready to build a new one. It seems bizarre that you’d tear it down in 1989, as well – at that point it should have been obvious that the boom was over?
Parking’s traditionally seen as the highest-value land use for a site that you’re not willing to build on yet. I wonder if that’s really still true, in a case like this: whether the owners would make more money from a temporary single-storey retail outfit like the one in the centre of Britomart.
> It seems bizarre that you’d tear it down
Oh, I didn’t see the comment about it having had a fire. That explains that, I suppose.
First I heard of the fire too, not in any of the histories.
But these chancers demolish the building as soon as they can precisely to make sure the site is unencumbered by potentially value limiting factors such as heritage buildings… a ‘convenient’ fire perhaps?
As you say that explains why such high value sites have such low value use.
If we wander back into Auckland’s brief history, the site is even more interesting. Fort St was the shoreline, so, effectively it’s the beach and it’s probably where Logan Campbell, Brown, Hobson, etc, landed to assert Pākehā hegemony over the land. Needless to say, this being Auckland, the site was flogged off soon after and acquired by a publican who erected an hotel that, loyally, he named after the British monarch. You can see it here, just to the left of the centre http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/dbtw-wpd/exec/dbtwpub.dll?BU=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aucklandcity.govt.nz%2Fdbtw-wpd%2FHeritageImages%2Findex.htm&AC=QBE_QUERY&TN=heritageimages&QF0=ID&NP=2&MR=5&RF=HIORecordSearch&QI0=%3D%224-1047%22. The hotel was torched in 1865. Its material remains were dumped in the hotel cellar and these, surprisingly, survived both the erection and demolition of the Auckland Star building being excavated in 1994. The site’s a symbol of Auckland: environmental destruction; crassness; cupidity; dodgy deals and all the rest. A multi-storey car park would the ideal building for those Aucklanders wishing to maintain the status quo.
I thought this blog was pro ‘market forces’. I recall the arguments for removing parking minimums being that the market would decide if apartments should have parking or not.
This is clearly a case of the market has decided to have a carpark rather than a building.
The market left entirely to its own devices will eat it own children, as well you know ‘Mark’.
I used to live in the Wrights Building which was over the road from the Auckland Star building (visible in picture 2). The Star building caught fire one night – maybe 1988? or maybe it was 1989 – and the heat was so intense it cracked our windows. We got to meet all our neighbours that night, standing around on the street. I was surprised to find how many residents were tucked away above shops and offices near the intersection of Commerce Street and Fort Street.
The Star building was later demolished, as you note, but the fire ruined it first.
I thought this had already sold? http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/ex-star-site-sells-26m-ch-p-156783 or is this article confused? or am I confused?
How could council NOT consent to another carpark? It is currently a carpark and the owners want to make a nicer carpark. It’s their land, they aren’t changing the land use, they are improving things for some portion of the community. There would be less than minor impact to the surrounding area. I don’t see why they even need consent. So I can’t see how Council could have opposed this without being taken to environmental court and losing.
Do maximum parking requirements not apply to carpark buildings too? Or are they a special class of building? I would have thought that the council could have refused to exempt the building from MPRs on the basis that there are already far too many carparks in the downtown area.
Isn’t it intriging. The date on that building is a mere 26years after the signing of the treaty of Waitangi. What enthusaiam and confidence in the future our forebears had to have got so far in so little time.
What is our account for the last 26 years on the site – a *** carpark. Well done city fathers. Love your vision – not.
And it lasted over 100years. Will a carpark built today still be there and in use 100yrs from now. I think not.
Speaking of the parking stump at the other end, amusing to see they’ve now painted some of the exterior columns in rainbow colours. You could not find a more literal application of the phrase “putting lipstick on a pig”.
I’d love to see this site converted into a public park, joining the O’Connell and Fort street shared spaces – the car park is currently used as a pedestrian thoroughfare, thanks to the stairs leveling up between the car park and Shortland street, so a building could potentially block this thoroughfare.
I suspect economics will again win here – I don’t think the parking company which currently owns/leases the site would have as much interest in developing a park which would provide little profit compared to a building.
No reason that a building couldn’t provide that access and the owners would have to be absolutely crazy not to. This is the route from High St to Fort ST!!!!!
The last thing I want here is an empty space, that’s what we have now. This site needs a building and a really good one. I am baffled by the idea that the city is improved by being less city-like. As it it is now the building to the west is stranded, orphaned in space, and needs connection; both Shortland and Fort St lack containment and intensity because of this crater.
Real urban street trees are fantastic, well designed and planned parks like Albert park are great too, but this is just a missing tooth in the built fabric. Can’t agree.
It is not hard to see good public space between these streets as being a likely outcome of any building here, but even if there wasn’t, Jean Batten place, newly improved, is just one building away for pedestrian connection between these streets.
Agree. if empty sites made for a great city, well Christchurch’s CBD would be best city in the world.
But sadly, it ain’t, buggerall buildings, and even less people thats why its a mess right now.