As one development on Freyberg Place comes to fruition in the centre of Auckland, another starts up. Andrew Krukziener's Metropolis project - the one so many sceptics said would never happen - opens its doors this Sunday and diggers started work this week on the Chancery site across Courthouse Lane.
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Metropolis, the hotel run under the Somerset Grand brand opens on Sunday, with settlement next Wednesday and Thursday on more than 300 apartments to be managed by the hotel operator.
Buyers of apartments on the penthouse levels above the 30th floor will settle by Christmas. There are still seven penthouse apartments unsold and 14 of the lower units.
The $180 million development on the old magistrates court site retains the courthouse building for a restaurant and main entrance to the hotel, with more restaurants around the base of the new tower.
Apart from direct apartment investors, Krukziener rearranged some of his finance with a short-term mezzanine bond issue and other investors will have an interest in the venture through a Waltus syndicate which has bought the top two hotel floors plus another six apartments.
On the other side of Courthouse Lane, the vacant site where NZI began work on a vast $700 million, three-tower, 73,000 sq m complex in 1988 has a new owner and a new project under way.
One part of the NZI project was completed - a parking bunker set into the hillside below Albert Park and Bankside St. The vacant site between that and Metropolis is to get about 40 shops and some offices in a lowrise joint venture between Westmark Group, headed by Richard Kroon and Brian Mead, and Mark Lyon's Mission Corporation.
They will reveal details of their Chancery project next Tuesday, but Kroon says it will be in sympathy with the existing High St frontages and will not take the sun away from Freyberg Place.
One brick short
When Lester Haycock, of Construction Marketing Services, got the mayor of Auckland, Christine Fletcher, to open his new building technology centre in the old McDonald's restaurant at Victoria Park Market this week, he mentioned that when the landmark chimney was erected in 1905 the mayor of the time, one A.M. Myers, had capped the structure but one brick remained missing.
Haycock has a brick from the chimney and a place to put it, and Mayor Fletcher says she will make the climb - timing undecided -as a charity-raiser.
Hawkins house passed in
The house former Equiticorp chairman Allan Hawkins had built on Tamaki Drive, bought by Serbian businessman six years ago and since upgraded, was passed in at a Bayleys auction this week with a top bid of $2.25 million.
Two Hawkins family trusts bought the cliff-face dwelling for just over $2 million on completion in 1988 and Hieber bought it for $1.4 million in the wind-up of Hawkins' affairs but a recent valuation put a $4 million tag on it.
Kingsland next
One of Auckland's busiest residential developers, Nigel McKenna, has headed to inner suburb Kingsland for his latest project, Kingsland 595, 33 terraced units on four levels at the corner of New North and Western Springs Rds.
Howard Sidnam of Bayleys, marketing the project for McKenna's company, Melview, says a third of the units have been sold in the first fortnight since their release, with prices between $199,000 and $215,000.
As one development on Freyberg Place comes to fruition in the centre of Auckland, another starts up. Andrew Krukziener's Metropolis project - the one so many sceptics said would never happen - opens its doors this Sunday and diggers started work this week on the Chancery site across Courthouse Lane.
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