Innovation revives industrial site

An old margarine factory has been transformed into a combination of home, office and shop development. Bob Deys pays a call.

As commercial and residential projects have changed the railway side of Newmarket Broadway and new retail schemes have extended the main shopping strip in both directions, Symphony Group has been busy wringing changes to the nearby industrial area of the old Abels margarine factory site.

Symphony's Colin Reynolds and Chris Minty have remained development leaders through the 1990s, doing some of the first office-to-apartment conversions in the central business district, turning the old Farmers store into an apartment hotel and getting accountancy firm Deloittes to move that short distance from what is regarded as cbd core on Shortland St across to the foot of Nelson St.

Its position on Fanshawe St faces the Viaduct Basin, which is rapidly being turned into a vibrant office and residential precinct.

What Symphony has achieved in Newmarket is also innovative - a combination of home, office and shop on a 3.5ha old industrial site.

Symphony bought the Abels margarine factory and parking across the road three years ago and decided to turn part of the site, the parking triangle between George St and Carlton Gore Rd at the back of the Auckland War Memorial Museum, into Australian-style terraced homes.

Reynolds has one of these in Sydney, but decided that for Auckland, with no distinctive terraced style of its own, they should introduce the Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane versions on each side of the triangle.

A courtyard has been designed for a combination of elegance and easy maintenance, and occupants have secure parking beneath that. For six of them with homes on George St, there are individual lockup garages.

Personalised Plates has made the street intersection a special spot, using commercial premises at the corner and the neighbouring apartment for its offices.

Along the Carlton Gore Rd frontage, beneath two or three levels of home, three retail tenancies have been sold as investments and two more are being marketed in the same sector as the first trio, to design tenants. The design of the building gives them an unusual advantage, a covered loading bay with a container truck turning circle behind the shops.

Across the street the first of the six office blocks in the Domain Centre is partly occupied, construction has started on the second and marketing will start soon for the third, with rents between $250 and $285 a sq m.

Minty says as much of the authentic look of the old-style terraces has been maintained, with some changes for practicality. The original Sydney units were so narrow you could not swing a kitten in them and they have been widened by a corridor-width. They have a slightly higher stud than modern units at 2.75m, eucalyptus floors, stainless steel kitchen surfaces and timber joinery.

The two-bedroom units have about 160 sq m on two levels, with a laundry behind doors on the landing. For a third bedroom the stairs rise through a skylight space to another 75 sq m of floorspace. Twenty-six have been sold out of 35.

Under the office blocks, Minty says parking has become more friendly than it was in the 80s. "You used to fit parks in. Now you design them."

Vertical and perimeter cabling has been provided for, VRV zone airconditioning is installed and the buildings have highly effective hush glass along the rear walls facing the suburban railway line.

Fibrous plaster tiles of the 80s, which reflected sound, have been replaced by high-rating acoustic tiles for open plan areas.

One tenant has found by using a cluster system it can get occupancy down to one staff member to 10 sq m - extraordinarily low and obviously not practical for all businesses.

Symphony has about 4600 sq m on five floors in each building, with 1000 sq m plates on the top three levels, 2.7m stud heights and high parking ratios of one park to 28 sq m in the basement and at the rear.

The location, stud height, security and parking ratios may attract some tenants from the central city, but Minty says many city employers still do not see their future outside the cbd.

"A lot of tenants are locked mentally into the city. It's still accessible and still has space. Tenants coming to Newmarket are probably more mobile and want to be in lower buildings."

Deloittes' move to Fanshawe St was similar, giving the accountancy firm naming rights of a seven-level building. "If that had been a highrise I don't think we would have got them [as a tenant]," Minty says.

"They've got good efficient space, all the space, parking and services they require, and they don't have to be in a 30-storey tower."