Take a walk: Inside the $790m Westfield Newmarket development

Take a walk through the enormous building sites set to transform Newmarket.

In the latest edition of our ongoing 'Take a Walk' series, property editor Anne Gibson takes a look at the enormous changes taking place at 277 Broadway in Newmarket.

Let's walk around New Zealand's largest retail development, Westfield Newmarket.

The $790m project is the biggest development in Australasia for this brand with 230 new shops and 2800 carparks, spanning two entire blocks with a two-level connecting air bridge.

We're on Broadway, heading up to what was the main entrance, looking at what's left of the 277 Broadway property, now dominated by tower cranes, heading towards the place many people will know where there was an escalator taking you into the mall.

The big new steel superstructure at the Gillies Ave or far end will be David Jones.

This site is very much at basement level but the shopping centre will span this entire block and around 110 shops are rising here now.

An artist's impression of the new building's exterior.

Walking from the Gillies Ave end with project manager Sean Nash of Scentre, we hear about a roof water feature set to flood this central area of the mall with light, patterns, movement. Multiple layers of car parking are being built.

Crossing the street and looking at the second live site, we now at the neighbouring 309 Broadway.

The super structure we can see will be home to dozens of shops and at the back, the huge new Farmers department store is already up here so this side of the project is far more advanced.

The two Newmarket city blocks will be linked via a two-level air bridge spanning Mortimer Pass. 81,000 cubic metres and rock are being removed from the site – equivalent to 33 Olympic swimming pools. 186,000sq m of concrete is being poured and 7100 tonnes of steel goes into this mammoth job.

The planned interior of the new complex, including department store David Jones.

That point you can see on the new structure? It mirrors an existing architectural feature in the older existing buildings being retained. We're looking into some of the shops overlooking Broadway, panning over Mortimer Pass, towards the Farmers.

This project set to bring 2800 new carparks, 230 new stores, Auckland's first David Jones, new Countdown and Events Cinema.

Inside the 309 site, we look at areas for shops, cinemas, Farmers with a massive carparking centre at the very back.

It's the biggest thing to hit the retail scene in New Zealand in many years and it's being done by Scentre Group which with Singaporean interests, owns the Westfield brands in NZ, developing in an area of Auckland which has the highest retail spending power.

Scentre say this is more of a lifestyle centre than a mall because it will have so many features.

The re-developed mall is scheduled to open in the latter part of 2019.