KEY POINTS:
Power retailing centre Botany Junction has launched the second phase of its $60 million development at Flat Bush in east Auckland.
The 7412 sq m second stage complements the 4730 sq m first stage, consisting of banks, a video outlet, an upmarket bar/restaurant, real estate office, superette, fast
food outlets and 1637 sq m of offices leased to small businesses. A Radius health centre occupies another 900 sq m of the centre.
Property defined as "power retailing" sits between malls and strip retailing and is driven by food and service convenience stores with doorstep car parking.
Colliers International retail broker Louise Church is leasing 1500 sq m of shops ranging from 100 sq m to 900 sq m in the second stage that includes 2190 sq m of first floor offices.
Church says developer and landlord, Broadway Developments, wants to attract a variety of tenants for the second stage, including a butchery, fruit and vegetable outlet, bakery, liquor store and other fast food shops. Already signed to leases are the ASB, Westpac, Hell Pizza, Caci Clinic, Michels Patisserie, Raviz, Coffee Club, and childrens playground Lollipops.
Rents for the remaining shops range from $350 to $550 per sq m. Church says she expects the competitive rents, quality of surrounding tenants and the calibre of architecture and finish at the centre to draw quick interest from retailers.
"Botany Junction surpasses other similar centres in every aspect and has become one of the biggest in New Zealand. Its 8315 sq m of shops and 537 car parks offer a high level of convenience shopping attracting hundreds of customers every day. That will only grow once the planned new Flat Bush town gets under way," says Church.
The development was launched two years ago by Broadway Developments and is the gateway to Flat Bush which will cover 1700 ha and become New Zealand's largest and most comprehensively planned new town for 40,000 people.
Broadway Developments bought the 2.4 ha Botany Junction site five years ago when it was a pony farm, built an extension to Michael Jones Drive and levelled the three hectares for the new shopping centre.
While many people thought Broadway Developments was taking a big risk, company director Neil Hamill says they knew Te Irirangi Drive would become a major arterial route linking Botany Downs and Manukau City.
"The growth in Botany Downs and Dannemora caught many people by surprise, but we knew there was an unsatisfied demand for housing in the area. Developers began by building 300 new homes a year and it quickly rose to between 500 and 700 new houses covering about one kilometre a year."
Hamill says there is still an appetite for housing in the area.
"Twenty per cent of the 600 people a day coming into Auckland gravitate toward Flat Bush. There are seven new schools in the area.
"Botany Junction sits on a site bounded by Ormiston Rd and Te Irirangi Drive. Ormiston Rd will become the main road to Flat Bush, designed to be an environmentally sustainable, highly urbanised, sophisticated town.
"The town will be the antithesis of any perceptions that Flat Bush will be a low-socio-economic area struggling to find its feet."
Manukau City Council will manage the development of the town centre through a Council Controlled Organisation (CCO). It will have the ability to enter into joint ventures, borrow, sell and invest in the market and promote the town centre. Every new building in both the town and neighbourhood centres will require resource consent from a design perspective.
At the heart of Flat Bush will be another council-led initiative, Barry Curtis Park. On the eastern side of Chapel Rd and divided into two blocks by Ormiston Rd, it will become one of 14 premier parks in Manukau, reflecting the people and cultures of the city.
The transformation of 117 ha from farmland to a large urban park started three years ago and is expected to take about 12 years.
Broadway Developments says the council's vision for Flat Bush will change the way people think about Manukau. "It's had confused socio-economic messages about its people, wealth and environment," says Hamill.
"When Broadway Developments started work on Botany Junction it took tenants time to accept it," says development manager Kim Hughes. "Nobody could see where customers would come from.
"The company also built 35 two bedroom apartments next to the retail development and sold them within 10 days off the plans. We were breaking new boundaries and many people had doubts about what we wanted to achieve.
However, Dominion Breweries wasn't one of the doubters. The company had done its work on the area's demographics and approached Broadway with plans for a sophisticated bar/restaurant complex.
Hughes says the planning by Dominion Breweries showed a sizable proportion of the population had high disposable income and didn't want to go to a "flying jug" bar or venture into the Viaduct because it was too far.
"Basically, there was nowhere suitable to go. The brewery could see our aims for Botany Junction and came on board from day one, eventually signing a long-term lease for Celsius, which has been hugely successful.
"Other tenants followed and Broadway Developments' strategy was to house the bigger retailers among the smaller stores so the development didn't have a 'long sausage cut into small pieces that are all the same size' effect."
Those tactics have driven Stages One and Two and have produced the careful tenant mix Broadway Development set out to achieve.
Hughes says the company could have leased the entire retail development within weeks. 'When retailers sign 10 to 15 year leases, the company has to show integrity and weigh up carefully what business is housed next to another."
He says Broadway will retain Botany Junction in its property portfolio.
"Botany Junction is a reflection of the dazzling success of convenience shopping after decades of being widely ignored by shoppers," says Church. "The new convenience retail clusters are a response to lifestyle trends. People are working a lot longer and harder. With more spare money and less time, they are looking for anything that makes life easier."
