Developers divy up Auckland's airspace

By ANNE GIBSON

Selling the air above buildings has become big business as developers vie for a slice of Auckland's sky.

AMP has agreed to buy the airspace above the historic church of St Matthew-in-the-City, giving it the right to build three levels in its 34-storey waterfront tower.

The Auckland City Council's acting manager of central area planning, John Stoupe, says the council has a list of 11 CBD buildings with saleable air rights, also referred to as "transferable heritage floorspace."

Developers can transfer the heritage floorspace from the historic building to another property, allowing them to build at a much higher density than the usual 4:1 plot ratio specified under the district plan for the CBD.

Among the 11 are Landmark House (formerly the Auckland Electric-Power Board building) on the corner of Queen St and Durham St West, the former Chief Post Office in Queen Elizabeth Square, the old Auckland Town Hall in Queen St, St Andrew's Church in Symonds St, the Northern Club in Princes St, the Vulcan Building on the corner of Vulcan Lane and Queen St, and the Civic Theatre complex on Queen St.

The council has a record of seven instances where air above the buildings has changed hands over the years, but the new owners have not always used the bonuses they bought.

One that did last year was property investor Kiwi Income Property Trust, which transferred heritage floorspace bonus points from a site in Chancery St to its recently completed 40-level Royal & SunAlliance Tower in Shortland St.

Australian mall owner and manager Westfield last year declared an interest in building in the air above Nuffield St in Newmarket, putting up a five-level shopping link between Broadway and its proposed $450 million centre there.

But before the council could decide on the controversial sale of the street, Westfield withdrew its application and is some months away from releasing its redesign and relodging it.

The property sector has not seen a fight for air for many years.

But in the 1980s developers were keen on deals to buy air rights. These included a proposal to buy the airspace above Wellington Railway Station and various department stores.

The sharemarket crash ended most of those dreams and the sheer volume of major CBD Auckland development sites resulted in air rights becoming a thing of the past.

Clinton Bird, associate professor at the University of Auckland's School of Architecture, said the idea of selling air rights probably started with Grand Central Station in New York, designated a landmark in 1967 by the New York City Landmarks Commission.

The late Marcel Breuer, an architect and former teacher at the Bauhaus, designed a 215m office tower above the railway station, resulting in litigation in the US Supreme Court.

As a result, New York's planning commission devised a way to give owners of landmark buildings the right to transfer air rights from one property to another, beginning a major trend internationally.

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