Nautilus tower 'in no danger'

Rick Martin. Photo / Herald file

Rick Martin, who developed Orewa's Nautilus high-rise apartment block, says the tower is not rotting and is not typical of most leaky buildings.

"If the building has been leaking then at least it's not going to rot and fall down. Even all the decks are concrete," Mr Martin said.

The Weekend Herald uncovered huge problems at the controversial tower in the beachside town that building consultants Prendos, which specialises in diagnosing weathertightness issues, was investigating. The tower's owners, through its body corporate, have been in meetings for years, and are now trapped between the builder and developer.

Mr Martin, of Cornerstone Group, acknowledged there were problems, and confirmed the Prendos probe, but said the 12-level tower was in no danger.

"The one thing that I'd like to point out is the big difference between the Nautilus and the normal leaky building is that it's built out of concrete, steel and treated timber," he said.

"As far as I know there was no untreated timber used on the Nautilus. By the time of its construction, I had told the architect and builders that no untreated timber was to ever be used on any Cornerstone projects. We even had some of the timber samples sent away for testing and all tests showed that it was treated timber."

Mr Martin took issue with comments from Dan Ashby, head of Brookfield Multiplex Constructions (NZ), whose firm put up the tower. Mr Ashby said he had heard nothing since late last year when he offered to meet parties involved, after receiving extracts from the Prendos report on the tower citing "global and systemic" issues.

"Dan's comments are a joke. As far as I know the body corporate have been on to Multiplex about this for years. All of it should have been fixed long before now under the building warranty. It's hard to believe that I've spent nearly a $100 million with Multiplex," Mr Martin said.

Multiplex built many of Cornerstone's big developments including the North Shore's tallest tower, the 30-level Sentinel apartment and shopping block in Takapuna's heart.

Mr Ashby partly blamed poor maintenance at Nautilus for issues thought to particularly affect the cladding. One source claimed the tower's body corporate was planning a claim of $18 million to $19 million which would make it New Zealand's largest defective building dispute.

Brookfield Multiplex did have warranty provisions in its contract to build the tower, he said, but these did not include fixing it because it had been badly maintained.

It is understood Brookfield Multiplex has engaged its own building expert, Brian Duffy of consultants Contrado, to mount a separate investigation.

Mr Ashby said lack of maintenance, problems with the design detailing in the tower's original plans and the materials which had been selected for the tower were issues which deserved examination.

He said he was happy to meet the parties who had concerns. But since extending this offer in November, he had heard nothing.