KEY POINTS:
Trains arrive at Sylvia Park's station every 15 to 20 minutes at peak hour, delivering shoppers directly to the Mt Wellington mall's own platform.
While shops in other centres close and retail spending shrinks, the owners of this mall say they are virtually full.
Sylvia Park, opened on
July 1, 2007, is New Zealand's biggest shopping centre, with 7.8ha of indoor space, and is one of the city's success stories.
You might think it sad that we hail a consumerist temple as one of the city's successes. You might also know that the pre-Christmas rush was not as mad as expected and The Warehouse decided to shut its discount beer and wine outlet at Sylvia Park, as well as others throughout the country.
But this commercial venture has still brought to Auckland some unusual features, developed in a built-up area in the centre of a huge catchment zone rather than in an out-lying area on the city's fringe.
Its own train station, paid for by owner Kiwi Income Property Trust, a new offramp from the Southern Motorway, a public bus area and its position by the Southern Motorway/Southeastern Highway junction make this mall unique in New Zealand.
The fact that shoppers can stand underneath the Southeastern motorway and hear cars roaring overhead is another quirk.
If you like your shops big, this place has scale, standing in 24ha with 206 stores and worth $470 million. It has drawn 12 million shoppers annually, many arriving in cars to park in the 4000 spaces. End-to-end, the mall runs just shy of 1km: one long 700m stretch giving shoppers who traverse it a fairly good walk.
Just before Christmas, an extra 750 carparks worth $14 million were added and a new road was created, giving five access points to the centre with an annual sales turnover that broke records in the $50 billion retail sector.
"Sylvia Park was the first New Zealand shopping centre to exceed $300 million in annual sales," Kiwi Income Property Trust said.
Whether the mall owner goes ahead with ambitious plans for a series of office blocks on its boundaries will be determined by the economy.
This mall is also only a single-level shopping centre with offices above, making it unusual compared to some of the city's more serpentine malls, such as Westfield Glenfield.
Sylvia Park was also future-proofed, being built strong enough to take further levels if needed.
The mall got off to a newsworthy start, with a $49 television offer thought to have caused the opening-day panic when 40,000 people arrived and blocked surrounding motorways.
Ash Hira, retail leasing boss at Colliers International, said Sylvia Park had been a success and quite unusual in New Zealand for its public transport links.
Big Australian malls such as Melbourne's new Direct Factory Outlet at the Spencer Street railway are built specifically to take advantage of public transport, he said.
Mr Hira remains impressed by Sylvia Park, praising its owners for "thinking through some of the issues they had in the past, like carparking".
Sylvia Park
* Completed: Mid-2007
* Total net lettable area: 70,818sq m
* Carparking spaces: 4000
* Occupancy: 99.7 per cent
* Current valuation: $470 million
* Major Tenants: The Warehouse Extra, Pak'n Save, Hoyts, Foodtown, Borders, Dick Smith Electronics, PowerHouse.
