Mary Smith, Pete Gregory and Jules Smith relax in their Balinese-inspired courtyard, which gives them an oasis in the centre of Whangārei. Photo / Denise Piper
Mary Smith, Pete Gregory and Jules Smith relax in their Balinese-inspired courtyard, which gives them an oasis in the centre of Whangārei. Photo / Denise Piper
A Whangārei family who extensively renovated a leaky inner-city building in a sustainable way hope others will follow suit and help revitalise the CBD.
Pete Gregory and Jules Smith have transformed the Vinery Lane building into a three-bedroom apartment, private courtyard, lower-level office and an industrial chic 240sq m first-flooroffice.
But the revamp goes further than their building thanks to Jules Smith’s mother Mary, who also lives in the apartment, extensively planting the nearby car park.
The couple bought the building from a Wellington estate about nine years ago, after deciding their 16ha Kokopu property wasn’t fitting with their lifestyle.
At the time, Jules Smith wanted to spend more time travelling overseas to suss out export markets for her business, WashBar dog soap.
She had been working with Ngāti Hine Forestry Trust on potential extracts from trees on its land, and when she found out the building the trust tenanted was for sale, she quickly declared her love for it.
Gregory said the 1960s building had potential but was very tired, with an unusable courtyard, 14 different air conditioning units and the top floor leaking from internal gutters.
“Every time it rained a bit more water got inside,” he said.
“But if you squinted you could see there was really good bones - there was potential.”
The couple moved into the apartment with Mary Smith and her dog Jaz, initially anxious about the large change from the country.
The Vinery Lane building has been extensively renovated, with retaining allowing the creation of the courtyard next to the public car park, and the upper floor having its leaky roof completely cut off and replaced. Photo / Denise Piper
Mary Smith soon decided she should be putting her green thumbs to use on the green space in the neighbouring car park and Whangārei District Council gave its blessing.
She transformed what was an overgrown and weedy grass area with hundreds of plants grown from seed, with the gardening soon spreading across the car park with layers of yuccas, flax, hebes, succulents and other shrubs.
Mary Smith said she gets plenty of positive feedback, especially from regular car park users.
“One lady said, ‘I love coming to work on Monday seeing what you’ve done over the weekend’.”
Scroll through the photo gallery to see more detail of the renovations:
Image 1 of 5: Pete Gregory and Jules Smith are proud of the renovation, which has created an industrial chic office space upstairs. Photo / Denise Piper
With the family’s love of outdoors evident, the first stage of the Vinery Lane redevelopment was to transform the outdoor area in 2021.
The couple bought a sliver of land from the council’s car park and built an engineered retaining wall, complete with private car park and Balinese-inspired sheltered courtyard on top.
In 2022, stage two of the development saw the lower-level office, previously occupied by a small law firm, transformed into a modern, open-plan 50sq m office space.
The final, and biggest, stage of the redevelopment took place after Ngāti Hine Forestry Trust ended its tenancy in June 2024.
Jules Smith and Gregory took the opportunity to modernise the space, upgrade the seismic rating of the building, and replace the problematic roof and internal gutters.
Using local firm DHS Construction, the final stage involved tenting the building, removing the roof and adding considerable structural steel.
The new space is a modern, industrial chic office space with exposed metal beams, bagged brick and vintage kitchen light shades from Bali.
Pete Gregory painstakingly cleaned the mortar off 7000 bricks so they could be reused, including 2500 bricks going to the old BNZ in Auckland's Birkenhead which is being converted into a restaurant.
With the carpet freshly installed, the couple hope to lease the office space now it has been finished.
But the finished building is just one half of the renovation story: the other half is the way materials were reused or recycled during the project.
With Jules Smith’s new business, Again, focused on reusing textiles and the couple discovering 40 to 50% of landfill waste is from construction, they decided to recycle where possible.
“We didn’t feel it was right for us to make an improvement to the building but at the same time add to the waste stream going to landfill, when it could be distributed around the community,” she said.
Recycling the old materials soon became Gregory’s fulltime job, including painstakingly cleaning 7000 bricks, 4.5 tonnes of acoustic ceiling tiles, 14 rimu doors and 250m of Oregon roof beams.
A lot of the materials went to projects around Northland, such as tiny homes, while most of the metal could be recycled, he said.
Innovation even saw things like 3cu m of mortar rubble being used for hard-fill and treated timber being used by mental health provider Ka Puta Ka Ora Emerge Aotearoa for raised garden planters.
The project also used recycled wall panels saveBOARD, made from old milk cartons, to further increase the recycling.
Like many grand designs, the project ran over budget and over time, but the final cost was still less than a new building and something that will stand the test of time, Gregory said.
“There’s a lot of tired commercial buildings in Whangārei that haven’t been shown the love: this is a good example of what you can do to transform it.”
Denise Piper is a news reporter for the Northern Advocate, focusing on health and business. She has more than 20 years in journalism and is passionate about covering stories that make a difference.
