Development update: July 2016
Christchurch
It’s been a while since our last update of Christchurch building consents – the number of new homes being approved by the various councils in the area. Christchurch City has had a bit of an uptick in the last couple of months, whereas consent numbers in the surrounding districts (Selwyn and Waimakariri) have flattened off – for Selwyn, at least, still much higher than the historical average.…
31 Comments Development update: June 2016
It’s been a little while since I wrote a “Development Update” post, and a lot has happened since then: The final batch of Special Housing Areas was approved.
Downtown Shopping Centre has closed, and is about to be demolished. Tunnels for the City Rail Link will be built underneath, and the site will be redeveloped as Commercial Bay, an office tower and shopping centre.…
The end of Auckland’s old growth model
The New Zealand Council for Infrastructure Development’s public shark-jumping exercise the other week got me thinking. While their flagship policy of a new megabillion eastern tunnel project is a bit mad, their report does a reasonable job of diagnosing one of the core problems facing Auckland.…
Development update: March 2016
Through my employer RCG, I’ve just put out a research piece giving 2017 as the first time that Auckland will build more attached homes (apartments, terraces) than detached houses.* This is one milestone, but really it’s just one of the ways in which Auckland is changing to become more city-shaped, as Patrick puts it.…
Unitary Plan Fantasies
Introduction
In this post I discuss two related questions that concern common “fantasies” about the Unitary Plan, specifically: Question #1: To what degree has Auckland’s density changed during the last few decades?
Question #2: To what degree does the balance of brownfields/greenfields development in the Unitary Plan differ from the past?…
Development update: February 2016
Auckland’s population keeps on growing, with a hearty mix of migration and wee bairns. And with that comes demand for development of all kinds. Residential gets most of the attention, and fair enough too: we’re still struggling to build enough homes for everyone who wants to live here.…
Development update: January 2016
2015 was a good year for the retail sector, and early indications are that stores had a good Christmas too. December is the busiest time of the year for retailers. They’ll move mountains to make sure that new shops (and shopping centres) are open in time for Christmas trading.…
The high cost of free parking
The announcement of the Commercial Bay development last week got me thinking about minimum parking requirements.
MPRs were removed from the city centre back in the late 1990s. Prior to that point,all new developments were required to provide parking at roughly the same rate as suburban developments.…
Development update: December 2015
This is the last “development update” post for the year, so I want to look back on some of the big news from the year (and things which weren’t ‘news’ in the media sense but which I think are important). Christchurch gets special attention, because of the massive changes that have had to happen down there.…
Commercial Bay
Precinct Properties have confirmed that they’ll proceed with the $681 million redevelopment of the Downtown Shopping Centre – which includes the construction of a 39 storey office building – after reaching their target of having 50% of the development pre-leased. Precinct own the current mall, along with the HSBC, Zurich, PWC and AMP towers and are grouping them all into a precinct they’re calling Commercial Bay which is the name originally given to the area before the land was reclaimed.…
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