There’s a good article up on the Herald website today, with an update on what’s happening with the Downtown Shopping Centre. I’d suggest heading over there and checking it out. The article notes that “Precinct [Properties] expects to release images of its plans towards the end of the year and hopes to start building in 2016”. It also has an image up that I haven’t seen before, so here it is:
The Herald article also mentions that Precinct have found a similar building underway in San Francisco and been over to take a look at it. The development in question is the Salesforce Tower, which is also a skyscraper above a railway tunnel. That building is taller than the one proposed for Auckland, and doesn’t seem to have as much of a retail component, but presumably a lot of the structural questions are similar. It’s great that there’s a comparable project which the development team can learn from.
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Looks like a pretty cool development. I just hope there’s a great plan to ensure we don’t lose QE2 square for little gain.
I thought that the gain is that Precinct are more supportive of the CRL than National is ever likely to be.
That’s a really old background image in that render. No Deloitte, no East Building at Britomart… Surely there’s not lack of up to date stock photos of the city?
That picture is from the old scheme consented by Westfield, not the current plans.
It’s called ” Cross my palm with Silver ” and you will get anything.
I’m sure it will be OK but I’m not too sure about the colour blue though. Remember the blue tower in Mayoral Drive. It was a bit of a dog.
Don’t count on the final product looking like that rendering. There’s a long way to go yet.
Probably my most exciting development in Auckland coming up. Will help regenerate quay street and the waterfront. The nearby queens wharf plan looks unfortunately like a fail, better to keep it as is than what they have planned.
I think the interesting thing for the new building it that while it will be over a railway line, it wont be over the station. Therefore they aren’t guaranteed the foottraffic that a station provides. While they will get it for the buildings to the west of the station provided they design it correctly, they miss out on all the pedestrians that go south (Queen Street) and East (less of an issue).
One thing I notice when visiting Melbourne and Sydney is how their inner city shops/malls are so much busier than Aucklands. I assume it has to do with good public transport taking you to a busy shopping area compared to NZ where everyone just drives to the closest Mall. Hopefully this new building will help change this.
Harvey the mall model is precisely what we don’t want here. That’s what is being demolished. The plan here is a reversion back to a street based form, and hurrah for that. Also the fact that this block has the train station on one side the Ferry Terminal on and another and the coming Lower Albert St bus station on another makes this development as about as Transit oriented as is physically possible: they ARE guaranteed the greatest intensity of transit sourced foot traffic any where n the country. And as these systems become more and more central to the city’s operation it will be one of the world’s great location- if done well.
Basically to transfer between mode you’ll be transiting this site.
Note they intend to replace the miserable square with an east/west street. Calling it ‘Little Queen St’ I would prefer they kept with the Melbournian pattern of naming the sub streets after the main ones they are parallel to. So this should be ‘Little Quay St’.
There was of course a previous north/south Little Queen St, shouldn’t that name stay with that historical entity?
> the mall model is precisely what we don’t want here. That’s what is being demolished. The plan here is a reversion back to a street based form, and hurrah for that.
That depends what you mean by “the mall model”. It won’t be indoors, but it’ll be effectively private space. Rather like walking through Chancery – nice enough, but ultimately a managed environment. The interesting thing in the design is how they balance Little Queen Street as a destination, versus a pedestrian thoroughfare for PT users wanting to make their transfers quickly.
I can’t say I see malls per se as a great evil. Even the classic suburban car-oriented model are still better than having individual stores each with their own carpark. While the parking-free but insular malls like Downtown don’t generally reject “the street” if a decent street is actually available. The Downtown mall rejects Lower Albert Street, but that’s because Lower Albert Street is kind of shit. And that’s caused by the traffic engineers, it’s not something the mall can fix (other than by not making the problem worse with carpark entrances).
I’m not for or against malls. They have their place but that isn’t everywhere. Malls are great for retailers thanks to the dependable comfortable environment, giving shoppers time to shop and spend more money 🙂 streets cape type open shops get tried often but too often rain showers or hot hum weather chase Auckland shoppers straight to the malls. On a nice day, open street shops are nice but we don’t get that often enough. Auckland ain’t Southern California afterall
Not a bad thing that we’re not SoCal; it gets hot there, at which point the air conditioning in malls starts to seem quite compelling. Auckland’s got a pretty good climate, and most of the time it’s nice enough on the street. Besides, I tend to find that parking at a mall becomes nightmarish when it’s raining.
I agree with Steve – there’s nothing wrong with central city malls, provided they interface with the street. They can offer things which high street retailers struggle with – weatherproof environments, amenities such as toilets and nappy changing facilities, etc, and they can be quite complementary to the high street. There are some great examples of this around the country, and Dunedin is probably at the top; three interconnected malls which relate well to George St, and which have the highest sales and rents in the city, i.e. they’re the most productive spaces.
I’ve got a post in the pipeline about the CBD shopping centres in Sydney as well.
Maybe a mall isn’t something that you want Patrick but I would love something along the lines of the Westfield Mall, a real anchor location with high quality shops and eateries.
sorry, meant to say Westfield Sydney mall…
I agree.
I certainly see the negatives of some malls, and there is no bigger waste of space than Downtown, the biggest plus point is a Maccas with a view . However, I’ve seen plenty of malls around the world to know that designed correctly they do have a place. I agree with Vera, the Westfield Sydney model is one I’d love to see here in an inner cbd location.
I will never enter a mall with piped music and shitty chain store offerings where ever it is, so I guess I do disagree with you about the qualitative difference, but agree completely that the details matter intensely. And as I have said before this will be harder here than at Btritomart because of the a sense of old buildings…. I look forward to the scheme but am very optimistic after discussing with the architects. There will be no road side parking.
I’m with you on this Patrick. I detest the places. Sterile, boring, no good atmosphere.