Mad Ave transformed into continental-style neighbourhood

By JOSIE CLARKE

Notoriety is all that remains of Auckland's "street from hell".

A new sign reading Mt Taylor Drive completes the overhaul of "Mad Ave", once claimed to be the ugliest blot on the city's landscape.

The old street called Madeleine Ave is now filled with the sound of drills and hammers. One billboard promises "Tuscany in Glendowie", another is nautically inspired, and a "French provincial" is about to get underway.

A house billed as a "European-inspired luxury home of stunning design" carries a $479,000 price-tag.

Healthy lawns run up to the kerb and gardens full of precisely placed native plants complete the immaculate showhomes open for inspection.

There is not a wheelie-bin, let alone a scrap of rubbish, in sight. No trace remains of the 169 rundown state houses that once lined the street.

Depending on your point of view, Madeleine Ave was a rough-and-ready working class area where everyone looked out for everyone else, a crime-ridden sink-hole or a failed attempt to alleviate social distress by providing state homes. Whatever the argument, the houses were sold or pulled down and the place transformed.

Haines House Haulage bought the old two-storey buildings from developer Kerry Dines, and sent three to a subdivision at Orongo Bay, near Russell, in the Bay of Islands.

The houses now have polished floors, a garage, dining room and decking. One has sold.

Of the 173 lots in the new development, 52 have sold and 15 houses are under construction. Seven have been completed and six new families have moved into Mt Taylor Drive.

Project marketing manager Otto Veltman says the remaining sites have first refusals on them, with three or four backups.

"We're trying to get away from the conventional type of look," he says.

"You can see we've got quite a variety of designs. We've got a nice big French provincial starting shortly."

The transformation has also increased the value of houses on neighbouring streets.

A Sierra St resident who does not want to be named says she assumes the value of her home will rise.

"We half-pie expected real estate agents asking us if we wanted to sell."

Dr Murray Johns and his wife were the first to move into one of the new homes, in February. The couple have lived in Glendowie for most of their lives and wanted to stay in the area, although Dr Johns says he used to do his best to avoid the old "hideous" avenue.

He is delighted with his purchase.

"They [the developers] really want it to be a very pleasant neighbourhood. It is going to be at the more affluent end of the market, but not the top end by any means."

He believes the decision to change the name was right, to rid the area of any stigma.

"But it also makes it difficult whenever we ask people to come here. We have to say 'Mt Taylor Drive - it used to be called Madeleine Avenue', because otherwise they would never find it on the maps."

Frank Harding, who lives in a pensioner flat over the road from a Tuscan structure, is ambivalent about his new neighbourhood.

"They're Italian-type, I know that. People who want to live in them, they'll like them. I don't have to."