From the start of summer, earthworks were carried out, levelling the land, forming the sites and installing drainage, roading and infrastructure.
"That work is still going on at the moment," Thomson said.
About 1km of roading is being developed in stage three.
The park is to the west of George Bolt Memorial Drive when entering the airport precinct and is to the north of the proposed new runway.
"This enables about 45,000sq m of new buildings to be developed. Buildings might be 5000sq m so there could be nine buildings which is quite a bit of capacity for the market in Auckland," Thomson said.
"This stage of The Landing is a pretty significant addition of land into the market and The Landing itself as a business park is about 100ha in total when the entire development is completed so it's parallel in size to Highbrook. This is a very major parcel of industrial land that we're developing. At the moment, it's just holding land used for agricultural purposes," he said.
"It's been acquired over many years, the last acquisitions being about 15 years ago."
Infrastructure work on stage two is complete. That 15ha parcel has one major building for DHL. Two new ones are going up - one spec build of 8000sq m and a building of 6000sq m for a technology user. "What we've seen is that there's strong tenant demand so that's why we're opening a third stage."
However, the airport is not selling any of its land or any of the buildings rising at the business park. Instead it is leasing both the structures and land.
"We normally look for terms of six years or longer. Typically terms are about 10 years. We've got an interest in holding the sites. We see this as quite an important part of our business. One of the benefits of owning it is we can give people undertakings about the standards and they get certainty around who their neighbours are going to be," Thomson said. "Because the park is going to adjoin the northern runway, we want to hold certain parts of land for logistics or aeronautical uses. A very large part of our tenant base is in the logistics sector and we want to make sure we're attracting those users to the park."
Chris Dibble, national research manager at Colliers International, said the squeeze was on the city's industrial space, with the latest vacancy rate showing market conditions had never been as tight in the past two decades.
"The Auckland regional vacancy rate is at 2.6 per cent as at February compared to 3 per cent a year ago, which was a record at the time," Dibble said.
"The pressure on prime space remains, which is at 1.3 per cent, or just 31,000sq m. Secondary vacant space is at 3 per cent, or 255,000sq m."
New builds
•Completed:
Steel & Tube, Highbrook7700sq m
210 Roscommon Rd, Wiri5500sq m
•Under construction:
LSG Sky Chef, Mangere11,600sq m
Ford, Underwood St, East Tamaki10,150sq m
106 Pavilion Drive, Mangere8500sq m
Flex2, 28 Verissimo Drive, The Landing, Mangere7270sq m
The Duplex, 32 Verissimo Drive, The Landing6810sq m
63 Hugo Johnston Drive, Penrose5500sq m
25 Aerovista Place, Wiri3500sq m
9 Narek Place, Wiri3300sq m
22-24 Jomac Place, Rosebank2800q m
Cnr George Bolt Memorial Dr/Landing Dr, Mangere12,500sq m
(Source: Colliers International)
