Sites march to developer's drum

John Dakin

A 4-hectare roof has just gone on Macquarie Goodman Property Trust's new distribution centre for Linfox Logistics at Mangere in Auckland.

Linfox is the first tenant for whom Macquarie has developed premises at its new Westney Industrial Park, a 26.6ha site at Westney Rd.

The site can take 12.5ha of buildings and is half-owned by the trust's ASX-listed Australian associate, Macquarie Goodman Group.

The $29.2 million Linfox building is actually 2.9ha, but its roof is far larger because of the need for a big, all-weather canopy for trucks, taking the total area to 4ha.

Earthworks are yet to be completed on the rest of the site which is rough and uneven, although a formed road has been built for access to the Linfox building.

Trust chief executive John Dakin acknowledges that some people find it hard to envisage the finished office park project when they see sites like Westney with only one building up.

A year ago, Dakin took a media contingent on a day's tour of Macquarie's office developments.

Last week, he invited the Herald back for an update to sites in Penrose, East Tamaki and Otahuhu.

The trust has $541 million in properties and, in the past year, has spent $388.2 million on property.

Across at Otahuhu, work is well under way at another Macquarie office park. Gone are the former railway workshops on what Macquarie has called Savill Link.

Macquarie plans to build 10 large industrial projects worth at least $130 million on the site, bordered by railway lines.

The site on Savill Drive was once home to the Otahuhu Railway Workshops which employed more than 2300 workers repairing and maintaining rolling stock, manufacturing hospital and school boilers, tugboat superstructures and petrol tanks. The workshops closed in 1992.

In their place are three new industrial buildings which are almost finished, including Toll Logistic's 1.8ha distribution centre, where racks for storage are being installed.

By September, work will finish on Nylex NZ's building. In April, Macquarie signed up Furniture City to lease a 6850sq m warehouse/distribution building with offices, all due to be finished in November.

It is no coincidence that Toll and Nylex are already Macquarie tenants in Australia.

The three buildings will bring Savill Link to a 21 per cent level of occupancy.

But the largest job by far is Macquarie Goodman Group's Highbrook Business Park on the Waiouru Peninsula.

Dakin showed off the entrance to Highbrook, where the new 3ha Excel building is almost complete. Work is due to finish by September and then the logistics firm will pay an annual $2.2 million in rent.

But the NZX-listed trust is locked out of the potential to reap rewards from Highbrook, a $1 billion, 153ha project.

"The size and scale of this is so big that the trust just doesn't have a big enough balance sheet," Dakin said, pulling on to the site which looks towards the Southern Motorway, with the upmarket Fisher & Paykel Healthcare building to the east.

To one side sits the stately former home of the Fisher family, now empty. Dakin suggests it could be converted into a reception centre.

Late last year, Australia's Macquarie Goodman Group bought a 75 per cent shareholding in Highbrook for $68.4 million. The balance is held by the Fisher Family Trust.

Up to 75ha of buildings can be built on the site, a project Dakin describes as having "phenomenal potential".

Greg Goodman, one of the group and trust's founders, said the park would be a drawcard to tenants from China and throughout Asia and, together, the executives are confident they can fill the park.

"You can't buy real estate like this - it's unique in the whole of Australasia," Dakin said, with a touch of envy in his voice as he watched earthmoving and scraping vehicles racing across the land.

Across town to Penrose, Dakin turns off Neilson St and into The Gate, last year still being developed but now a closely-packed 15ha site. A 7334sq m warehouse and distribution centre for Winstone Wallboards is being developed jointly with Macquarie Goodman Group.

"This will be a $100 million asset," said Dakin, passing the new BOC Gas building and turning around at this park's highest structure, the 5300sq m Recall building, let to a wholly owned subsidiary of global support services group Brambles.

Other tenants at The Gate are B. J. Ball Papers, Carter Holt Harvey Tissue, Rapak Asia Pacific, Yates New Zealand, Toll Holdings and BOC Gas.

On the rise

* The Gate, 373 Neilson St, Penrose.
* Savill Link, on Savill Dr, Otahuhu.
* Westney Industrial Park, Westney Rd, Mangere.
* Central Park Corporate Centre, Greenlane.
* Highbrook Business Park, Waiouru Peninsula.