AMP reveals its plans for a town centre, and is slowing progress for its smaller neighbour. Bob Dey reports.
AMP Asset Management revealed that look of its proposed $180 million-plus Botany Downs town centre this week – a mixture running from large retail outlets through smaller shops fronting traditional-style streets, up to a town square and a covered mall, with entertainment and possibly a supermarket off to the sides.
Its style is welcomed by neighbour Mark Gunton, whose Westland Group wants to build the Hub bulk retail centre on the other side of the new East Tamaki central arterial route (known as Etcart), a $45 million, 7.8 km road linking Manukau City Centre and Howick.
But Gunton is angry, too, accusing his neighbours of holding up construction through 11 weeks of good building weather for competitive reasons. AMP and the company selling the big site to it, Foodstuff's National Trading Co, have both objected to Westland's project, giving him a harder path through the consent process.
"We're competing for the same tenants – we're looking at a centre similar in style to the Waltus Mega Centre at Albany," he says.
AMP hopes to get consent next week for the first stage of its project, for bulk retail, some retail of a boutique nature and parking, and Gunton is hoping to resolve consent issues any day.
But because of the consent delay, the Hub will miss its original October opening target. Westland has had 100 registrations of interest for 22 tenancies.
Mike Geale, development manager for AMP's Botany Downs project, says its initial large retail outlets will add about 12,000 sq m to the existing 16,000 sq m of Pak N' Save supermarket, Farmers, Warehouse and Danske Mobler stores.
The AMP town centre is planned to have about 100 outlets (compared to 115 and climbing at St Lukes), with the first stage completed by next April and the whole centre opened by May 2001.
Hames Sharley research and planning manager Greg Davis, who has worked on community input to the centre design, says the AMP project will be a benchmark in design and is already a benchmark in attitude – the reverse of the usual developer-led box creation.
"You're taking the focus from an internalised box to a community environment. It's been said by developers for 15 years that can't happen for economic reasons, and because of the way communities have been telling them they need climate control. Now people are saying, 'We do like walking along shop fronts.'"
Geale expects the stage 2 consent application can be lodged in May, but it is not expected to depart greatly from the concept illustrated. It has a mixture of outdoor communal space, a town square with an archway through to parking on the East Tamaki Rd side, a covered fashion precinct and a sheltered street to buildings whose uses are not yet disclosed.
The second stage will contain an entertainment precinct and Geale says that, as a place to relax as well as shop, the centre will be open much longer than most malls.
A significant difference for Botany Downs is that AMP Asset Management is not just a developer "flicking it on" but is a committed long-term owner looking to sustain growth.
"The long-term potential is better," says Geale.
As it is mostly single-storey development, Geale says flexibility is part of the design. "We could change a precinct without flattening the centre.
"Structurally we're going for economic configuration, but building a block so it looks like several buildings. You can create a lot more interest by varying the façade. If we're successful, we'll have Australians and Americans coming to New Zealand to see how shopping centres are built. It's a different kind of environment we're trying to create here."
Botany ups and downs
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