Tower tipped as council's new HQ

Doug McKay. Photo / Dean Purcell

The Super City's Auckland Council is considering moving its headquarters from the Civic Building to the nearby ASB Tower in downtown Auckland.

The Herald understands the 31-storey ASB Tower is the frontrunner among five possible options.

The ASB Bank is leaving its New Zealand headquarters on Albert St and moving to a $126 million six-level office block rising in the Wynyard Quarter around the middle of 2013.

The ASB Tower is one of the city's premier skyscrapers with an on-site gym and fitness club, squash courts and a cafe in the entrance atrium. It has 10 high-speed lifts and an A+ grade earthquake rating. The building opened in 1991 and, at 116m, is the seventh-tallest in the city.

Auckland Council chief executive Doug McKay is keen to move the majority of the 3500 council staff who work in the central business district into a single building for the next 20 to 30 years.

At the moment the city-based staff are in nine buildings around the city, including the Civic Building in Aotea Square, which has been the headquarters of the former Auckland City Council since it opened in 1966.

However, the 19-storey building, once the tallest in the city, is riddled with asbestos and cannot be altered without huge disruption at major cost.

Mr McKay yesterday said he was limited in what he could say because the council was in negotiations.

But he confirmed the council had been looking at five options in the city, ranging from leasing to constructing a new building.

A confidential report on the matter to be discussed at today's strategy and finance committee meeting is understood to recommend going with the ASB Tower.

Asked about the tower, Mr McKay said: "We know it is going to be vacated over the next two to three years and it is reasonably well located."

Cost savings from consolidating city staff into a single building is understood to be a big factor in the decision to move.

"It is all about starting to realise the transformation of benefits of being the new Auckland Super City," Mr McKay said.

"We have got to now behave and react in different ways that were never possible before."

Mayor Len Brown and his office have no plans to move from the Auckland Town Hall, a short walk from the Civic Building and the ASB Tower.