Futuristic tower hits a high note

The wizardry of Auckland's new 30-level Lumley Centre will be revealed as a state-of-the-art office tower.

Lifts which fly between floors, outdoor entertaining decks on levels 27 and 28 and a river snaking through the ninth-floor entry foyer - just some of the features to be unveiled when the country's most intelligent building automatically opens its electronic doors this winter.

The wizardry of Auckland's new 30-level Lumley Centre will be revealed as a state-of-the-art office tower which has attracted a blue-chip list of tenants - lawyers by the mile and a sprinkling of the insurance crowd for good balance.

Stay in good with Simpson Grierson this year and you could be invited to an opening bash which promises to be one of the year's best.

The event will showcase one of the city's top outdoor perches, on level 28 on the hilltop ridge well above Shortland St, Fort St and Emily Place.

The lawyers had already caused a few gasps when it became known they were spending $10 million on their internal fitout - long before they paid the first rent cheque to their Australian landlords.

Simpson Grierson is expected to entertain and party hard in their new 200-guest function room, which flows into a 200sq m triangular outdoor roof deck on the tower's northern apex.

Sea views are a major envy factor here. No tenants in the neighbouring Vero Centre on Shortland St or the PricewaterhouseCoopers Tower on the waterfront get a deck, let alone at such a dizzying height. (The $170 million PWC tower, completed in 2002, and the Vero Centre, valued at around $215 million and completed in 2000 are the Lumley Centre's nearest rivals.)

"We won't be leasing our function room out for 21st birthday parties, but we do expect to hold company shareholder meetings and corporate launches or functions there," said Simpson Grierson partner Greg Towers.

The level-28 deck spans a full quarter of a floor plate and is the first of its kind in the city.

No safety worries on that breezy outdoor pad. Peddle Thorp Architects designed a 1.1m-high glass and stainless balustrade to protect the stumblers from themselves.

If the top deck is full, the lawyers can always move down to the staff deck on level 27 where a 7m by 7m by 9.5m triangular-shaped area has been built for more intimate parties.

The decks are highly unlikely to sport family-sized barbecues. Food will instead be prepared discreetly in vast high-spec commercial kitchen areas towards the core of the floor plate on level 28.

Those not invited into the lawyers' lair can walk around the public entry foyer off Shortland St on level nine to admire unusual features. A river, 30cm at its deepest point, will run 70m, the entire length of the building, and end in a weir.

Artworks by Stephen Bambury, Len Lye and others will grace the foyer. An aluminium-clad, drum-shaped stairwell will allow access from the foyer to the floor beneath.

The air-conditioning plant at the top of the tower has multiple control chillers and a condenser water loop to give 21 different temperature zones on each office level. Central air handling stations are the top and bottom of the office tower and will feed cooled or heated air to the floors via vertical risers.

And the cost? Simpson Grierson will pay more than $3 million a year in rent. But as well as the views and technical brilliance of the new building, they get 17 client carparks and about 40 for partners and staff.

Full electronic security, copper and fibre communication systems and extensive storage space tucked onto carparking levels are further features of the tower.

Not all the office levels from floors 14 to 28 are leased yet. So far, the seating plan stacks up like this:

Level 23 to 28, Simpson Grierson; level 22, barristers will sublet two-thirds of the space from Simpson Grierson; level 17 to 20, law firm Minter Ellison; level 14 to half of 16 and all of 21, Lumley Insurance.

Interesting facts about the new Lumley tower include:

* Developer Manson Securities sold

the partly built centre this year to Australia's Deutsche Office Trust for $110.4 million.

* Simpson Grierson is the anchor tenant, taking seven floors, but insurance giant Lumley got the naming rights for a secret sum late last year.

* During construction, the tower had a pseudonym: NRM Tower, standing for Northern Roller Mills, due to its location on the former milling site, spanning the hill-top rise at the intersections of Fort St, Shortland St and Emily Place. The historic Northern Roller Mills building facade has been retained and restored on Fort St.

* Richard Goldie, of Peddle Thorp Architects, designed the tower, which is being clad in two tones of blue high-performance glass. The twin-coloured facade has been designed to accentuate a split angle, a feature which represents sails to link into Auckland's nautical past and present.

* Consulting firm Beca designed the building's high-tech services, was the lift consultant and acted for Simpson Grierson in managing the relationship between the lawyers and the developers.