Apartments at 59 France St: residents begin moving next month. Photo / Urban Collective
Apartments at 59 France St: residents begin moving next month. Photo / Urban Collective
A $100 million apartment block which has risen on a former hotel site in Auckland was delivered 10 weeks ahead of schedule and under budget, its developer says.
Kelly McEwan of Urban Collective said the 109-unit project at 59 France St, Eden Terrace was built by CMP Construction on thesite of the former Kings Arms Tavern.
While many projects have been delayed due to the pandemic, particularly the five-week alert level 4 which shut most construction sites, McEwan said the builders overcame the obstacles to finish work at pace.
Asked how the project had exceeded expectations, he said: "It was everyone, a very tight well-managed team all working together."
McEwan said the time-lapse video gave an insight into the processes behind the project.
Deposits have been received on 99 of the 109 units, which sold from $515,000 for 45sq m to $2.4m for a much larger place in the nine-level block, he said.
A top-level 195sq m penthouse is still for sale price-on-asking.
"This is the largest project I've completed. We're revitalising that Newton area," McEwan said, citing a number of office and apartment projects by the business he owns. He sees big potential for the area, positioned on the fringe of the CBD and close to major transport connections.
"This is my 58th development," said McEwan who has also built projects in Wellington, Christchurch and Queenstown.
"This was a very tight team of people and done well."
Iconic music venue the Kings Arms Tavern in Eden Terrace. Photo /Peter Meecham
Half the units were sold without carparks: "First-home buyers and investors didn't want them. A lot of the parents of first-home buyers told them to buy carparks but their kids said they didn't want them because they didn't have a car," McEwan said.
The block designed by Paul Brown Architects has 95 carparks in two basement levels and McEwan estimated a carpark added around $85,000 to the cost of an apartment.
"A few years ago, about 15, we were forced to provide two carparks for each unit which was ludicrous," he said of previous council rules.
Frances Lynch and Kelly McEwan. Photo / Norrie Montgomery
CMP has the project on its site as having started in October 2018, the estimated completion time as November this year and the project value at $52m.
In 2018, the Herald reported on the death of Maureen Gordon, former owner of the Kings Arms Tavern, the matriarch of one of Auckland's great live music venues.
For more than quarter of a century, she earned the deep respect of a music industry whose denizens of the Newton pub were mostly two or three generations younger than she was, an article said.
But Gordon, who died aged 86, was not always surrounded by noisy pub bands. Her parents enrolled her as a boarder at St Mary's College in Ponsonby, where she came under the tutelage of Dame Sister Mary Leo. Her operatic talent was such that she won the New Zealand Aria competition and travelled to London to further her studies.
The Kings Arms Tavern ran for more than 25 years and McEwan said members of the Gordon family had bought into the new apartment project.
