Three up, one down in Carlaw Park makeover

Greg Reidy says McDougall Reidy is considering resurrecting plans for a retirement village on the Carlaw Park site. Photo / Paul Estcourt

Three new buildings worth more than $125 million have risen on the old Carlaw Park sports site off Auckland's Stanley Street.

But Vision Senior Living's plans for a vast multi-level $120 million retirement village on the former home grounds of the Auckland Rugby League have now been ditched, the 200-unit project damaged by the housing downturn.

Princes Wharf-based property developers McDougall Reidy & Co, formerly Willis Bond until a split, opened the Carlaw Park business precinct in the Grafton Gully with a real estate triumvirate: two big new office buildings with a variety of tenants paying up to $350/sq m rent and a Quest Hotels short-stay block with retail outlets on the ground floor.

McDougall Reidy has build on about half the 3ha site which it bought four years ago for about $20 million. Another 1.7ha is yet to be developed.

All three new buildings were designed by Warren and Mahoney's John Coop, most were engineered by Holmes Consulting and all built by Haydn & Rollett Construction.

McDougall Reidy now plans to build the retirement village on the Parnell side of the old park where Vision had hoped to build.

Two years ago, Vision's Peter Bourke predicted many of the units would be up by now, selling from $489,000 to $1.1 million.

Greg Reidy of McDougall Reidy said his firm was now considering developing the village of 130 to 160 units.

The largest of the three new McDougall Reidy buildings is a 12,000sq m, $50 million commercial block with three international tenants who all have names on the exterior of the block: Nestle, Sinclair Knight Mertz and DataCraft.

The NZ Institute of Chartered Accountants and Department of Conservation are also in this building. The institute has a 250-person conference centre there too.

The second block is the 42-unit apartment-style Quest Hotels, operating on Nicolls Lane off Stanley St near the motorway junction with ground floor tenancies leased to a cafe, sushi shop, day spa and pizza shop.

The third block fronting Stanley Street was dubbed the Slider Building. This block at 8-14 Stanley St has been leased to KiwiRail and National Library of NZ. The library is operating from the block but the fitout of KiwiRail's offices is yet to be finished.

Reidy said McDougall Reidy was a founder of Direct Property Fund which started in 2003. That unlisted business owns property worth $390 million, he said, including the Carlaw commercial, hotel and retail blocks.

A seven-level carpark building with space for 650 vehicles is at the back of the Quest and on the Auckland Hospital side of the site. Capital for the development came from major trading banks including BNZ, Reidy said. ANZ had loaned money for the KiwiRail/National Library block.

PROGRESS REPORT

McDougall Reidy's three new blocks:
* Quest short-stay apartments.
* DataCraft/Nestle/SKM building.
* KiwiRail/National Library NZ block.