Wade Brown at the new Pak'nSave Highland Park, which opens on February 25, 2025. Photo / Foodstuffs
Wade Brown at the new Pak'nSave Highland Park, which opens on February 25, 2025. Photo / Foodstuffs
A fortnight away from opening New Zealand’s most expensive new supermarket, its owners have blamed Watercare for putting the date at risk.
But the Auckland utility says it has offered Foodstuffs North Island an interim solution to agree to meet firefighting water requirements and it can therefore stillmeet the crucial February 25 target opening date.
Lindsay Rowles, Foodstuffs North Island’s general manager of retail and property, said the February 25 opening of the $100 million Pak’nSave Highland Park was “at risk”.
But Watercare chief strategy and planning officer Priyan Perera said Foodstuffs had not responded to its suggestion of an interim solution.
Rowles said Watercare told Foodstuffs just before Christmas that it needed a huge water-holding tank in case of a fire at the supermarket, even though all the advice Foodstuffs received from its experts showed the network supply was more than adequate to meet firefighting requirements.
Inside the new Pak'nSave Highland Park which opens at 7.30am on Tuesday, February 25, 2025. Photo / Foodstuffs
The tank would be the size of three buses, hold 250,000 litres and be underground “but that’s extremely difficult for us now, because we’ve built the new supermarket and its carpark”.
Perera said Watercare had been liaising with Foodstuffs since last June when it applied to connect to its services.
“While we were unable to approve their application due to a significant change in their water demand, we acknowledge and support their desire to open later this month. We have offered an interim solution that will allow the supermarket to open on its intended date, but Foodstuffs has not yet confirmed it will proceed with this option,” Perera said.
Rowles said that in July 2023, Watercare signed off documents allowing the store to be built “but did not ask for flow rates of water being drawn to be used on the site at that time.
“We’ve now gone to get approvals for final connections with Watercare and this is where it gets strange. We have a water intake demand of 92L per second and a buffer of a further 25L a second, drawing 117L per second in total at maximum use. But the system has 121L per second available so the system we have is more than adequate and we’ve tested that three times,” he said.
Lindsay Rowles of Foodstuffs North Island says the new Highland Park store may not be able to open on February 25. Photo / Michael Craig
“If the building catches on fire, Watercare is saying we’ll cause a problem in the network due to the amount of water we’d need. We’re saying that’s not true. Our daily use is below that and even if there was a fire, our use is less than the capacity available,” he said.
The loading dock would have to be dug up if Watercare insisted and the tank installed underground. Works could cost around $1m, Rowles said. Code compliance can’t be signed off until water connections are approved.
“They’ve said to us, ‘If you sign the agreement saying you’ll build the tank in the next 12 months, we’ll sign off the water connection’.”
Perera said problems arose last winter.
“When we reviewed the engineering plan approval application in 2023, it did not specify any special requirements for firefighting flows, beyond the standard requirement for 25 litres per second to be available in the network to meet the NZ Firefighting Code of Practice.
“Unfortunately, it wasn’t until Foodstuffs applied to connect to our water network last June, and we sought additional information, that they then told us they needed 90.5 litres per second for firefighting flow, which is significantly more than the standard requirement in this area,” Perera said.
Watercare Priyan Perera,(left) with Axel Dumont at Pukekohe. Photo / Watercare
The old supermarket on that site, now demolished, had a fire flow requirement of only 22.5 litres per second, he said.
Watercare declined Foodstuffs North Island’s application because:
The water network supports overall growth in the area and is not intended for individual fire connections. Allocating 90.5 litres per second for one store alone would reduce available capacity for future growth and compromise service levels for other users in the network, including future residential and commercial customers;
Watercare has a duty to provide a reliable water supply to all its current customers. The wider network is not designed for a single site to draw such a high flow in a short period, whether it’s for fire suppressions or testing purposes. This could damage the local water network and pose a significant risk to customers connected in this zone.
While the water network can provide up to 120 litres per second, Watercare can’t allocate three-quarters of this capacity to one commercial customer to meet their firefighting requirements, as it needs to maintain headroom for current and future customers, Perera said.
On-site water storage for firefighting purposes, such as large water tanks, is commonplace at big commercial developments, including supermarkets. It is the developer’s responsibility to provide that, Perera said.
Rowles said 250 staff were ready to work in the store in a fortnight and that store is also being stocked.
Groceries coming soon: Lindsay Rowles and Nick Hanson inside the vast new Pak'nSave Highland Park. Photo / Jason Oxenham
“This creates lots of uncertainty for plenty of working people,” he said, referring to 250 staff about to work in the store.
“This is one of the worst situations because usually you work with authorities and you can come up with an outcome that works,” Rowles said.
“The opening is under threat but we’re hoping in this coming week, Watercare will see reason and approve what is approvable. All our experts say they can approve this. There’s no a risk to safety or the system,” Rowles said.
A certificate of public use would not be granted unless Foodstuffs agreed to Watercare’s terms, he said.
Anne Gibson has been the Herald’s property editor for 25 years, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.
