Revamp of planned Britomart hotel still over limit

This concept drawing for the Britomart by Sydney architects Johnson Pilton Walker shows the revised approach.

The developer of Auckland's $1 billion Britomart precinct has scaled back plans for a towering luxury hotel on the waterfront.

Cooper and Company yesterday unveiled plans for a stepped building that is not as high as the hotel building proposed last year, but still breaches the allowable height limit.

The company announced plans in June last year to build a luxury 175-room hotel on the Seafarers Building site on Quay St in time for the 2011 Rugby World Cup. It would have been up to 101m, four times over the allowable height limit at the historic Britomart precinct.

After a public outcry at the height, bulk and how the building related to the precinct, Cooper and Company went back to the drawing board.

Auckland City's urban design champion Ludo Campbell-Reid called the hotel "alien" in scale to the heritage needs of the precinct.

The Historic Places Trust said that it would disrupt the rhythm, pattern and grain of the urban zone.

Chief executive Matthew Cockram said the company had listened carefully to the feedback for the hotel building and taken a new approach for one of the last remaining development sites along the waterfront.

He said a panel of architects - Pip Cheshire, Clinton Bird and Jeremy Salmond - had looked at all the issues and created a "much superior" building envelope. The plans had been peer reviewed by Sydney architect Richard Johnson and run past Auckland City Council's urban design panel.

The new building would be made up of two heights to echo the pattern of different heights along Quay St. The maximum heights would be 61.4m and 35.4m. The allowable building height for the site is 24m.

Mr Cockram said the economic recession counted against a luxury hotel proceeding, but the company would love to build a boutique hotel on the site some time in the future. Residential use was another option.

Asked why the company was persisting with a building above the permitted height limit, Mr Cockram said the site owed Cooper and Company a lot of money and it wanted to replace the Seafarers Building with something wonderful for the city.

"What is permitted is what is there and what is there is not good and has to come down some time," he said.

The company is not planning to develop the site in the next couple of years, but is seeking a plan change from the council to extend the building envelope. Once the plan change is notified in the next week or so, the public will have a month to make submissions.