How to keep pace with fast-walking, fast-talking developer Graham ‘Mr Quick’ Wilkinson with his $500m Parnell project? Why is ‘Mr Hotel’ Dean Humphries leaving Colliers? What do sector leaders say about the cherubic-faced Chris Meehan’s Wynyard Quarter plans? And why do people admire Shane Brealey and all Simplicity is achieving?
Property Insider: ‘Mr Quick’ Wilkinson striding ahead fast; ‘Mr Hotel’ Humphries leaving Colliers; cherubic Chris Meehan praised for Wynyard plans; plaudits for Shane Brealey aka Jerry Maguire
Christopher Luxon at the opening of retirement village The Foundation. Photo / Alex Burton
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Over champagne and canapes, the fast-talking southerner and the PM met residents, people planning to move into the next stage of the development, project partners, consultants and business associates.
A commemorative plaque was unveiled to mark the opening, with Wendy Petrie calling the countdown ‘three, two... one!.”
White phalaenopsis orchids cascaded from tropical monstera, pungent stocks and hydrangeas.
Flowers were placed near the bar and as a dramatic backdrop to the stage. The event for about 100 people was held in an annexe of the Jubilee Building and flowers were highlighted by fluoro-green underlights.
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The Foundation’s first building, Nathan Residences, opened in October.
Kalmar Construction is working on basement below-ground works for the second adjacent building, Abbott Residences.
More than 250 residents will eventually live at The Foundation, once it is completed in about four years.
Development costs will approach $500m, a Generus statement said.
Wilkinson’s Generus owns six retirement villages and he also owns the Hotel St Moricz Queenstown.
But Wilkinson said this week he had sold Queenstown Outdoor Mini Golf property, consented for a 393-room hotel and retail outlets “because I want to continue to develop more retirement villages in Auckland”.
‘Mr Hotel’ Humphries leaving Colliers
Colliers’ national hotels director, Auckland’s Dean Humphries, is leaving the business after nearly 40 years working in property. He is now planning to be partly in Auckland, partly in Queensland.
“After nearly four decades in the wider property service sector, I have decided to retire from the industry at the end of this month.
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“Having worked in the hotel and tourism segment for much of this time, I have had the privilege to work with many great people, so I would like to personally thank you all for your continued support over the years,” Humphries wrote.
He plans to remain in Auckland for some of the time and in Queensland, in what he called “a co-location, with a number of other part-time roles”.
His wife is Australian, so they’re going to settle north of the Gold Coast.
“Time spent putting something back into the property industry was probably the real highlight,” Humphries said of all his years working in the sector.
He recalled the 1990s, when he had a fulltime job and three children under 5, but chose also to lecture at Unitec and Massey University from 1996 to 1998.
He then took on a senior lecturing post in the property department at Auckland University, teaching property valuation from 1999 to 2011.
His reward is seeing many former students run our largest property companies.
Humphries said he took a big risk from being a salaried property valuer at 45, to becoming a completely commissioned-based hotel broker “with no income guaranteed”.
“Basically, I saw a gap in the market. I could utilise my technical, analytical and professional skills to quickly adapt and gain the confidence and respect of hotel owners. The sales then followed.”
In 2010, he sold the 320-room Hyatt Regency Auckland on behalf of South Canterbury Finance’s receivers.
That really put a rocket under his career.
“The hardest deal was selling the Hilton Hotel Auckland in 2012 because of its underlying complexity in terms of tenure - terminating leasehold/seabed sublease and its high profile in the market.”
His most rewarding deal was working with the Russell and Lockwood families and the New Zealand Super Fund to assemble one of this country’s largest hotel portfolios - the NZ Hotel Holdings portfolio, with seven hotels and 1400 rooms.
He set the record for the South Island’s largest hotel deal in 2015, when he sold the 273-room Novotel Gardens Queenstown for $91.5m.
The most technically challenging deal came in 2021 with the sale of the 60-room Sofitel Queenstown and 280-room Rydges Wellington.
More than 340 strata titles and about 250 owners had titles to all those rooms. The sale required agreements from all owners soon after Covid times: “Nothing like this has been achieved here before,” Humphries said.
But the best part of all those years and all those deals?
“It’s the people I worked with, my colleagues, peers and clients.”
‘It will be Ayrburn, but in Auckland’
Property chiefs are admiring the cherubic-faced Chris Meehan and his $750m Wynyard Quarter plans after he announced Winton Land would build a 12-level luxury apartment block The Villard, with the penthouse asking price set at $29m.
“It will be Ayrburn, but in Auckland,” said one major investor of the waterfront plans around Beaumont St.
Ayrburn, the new hospitality venue near Arrowtown, draws praise for careful restoration of beautiful old farm buildings, lawns, landscaping, staff, food, drink, amenity, views, attention to detail - the entire venue so beautiful that Property Insider thought this real photo (above) was a render. Too pretty to be real, surely?
Some are questioning how Meehan will manage to sell Villard units from $5.4m and have doubts about its success.
Jerry Maguire/Shane Brealey - more plaudits
People in the sector also admire Simplicity Living managing director Shane Brealey, nicknamed Jerry Maguire after the Tom Cruise character who, like Brealey, resigned from a big corporation to form his own business.
In 2004, Brealey left his role as New Zealand managing director for Multiplex to establish his own construction business, NZ Strong, which he later sold to ex-Hawkins supremo Chris Hunter.
Simplicity’s design, method of procurement, construction, tradie interaction and project management with a constant focus on improvement - aka kaizen Toyota - “cannot be replicated by any existing construction firm in NZ”, one expert said.
No other firm could secure the substantial cost savings Brealey does in providing mid-level apartment buildings to the build-to-rent market, or the for-sale market.
In response, Brealey said he would willingly share Simplicity’s intellectual property with any other developers who want it.
“The fact our sector doesn’t share IP like the fishing, farming, agriculture, automotive, and aviation sectors probably goes some way to explaining why productivity and quality outcomes remain so poor. Let’s change that,” Brealey said.
Nationally, Simplicity plans 10,000 new rental units worth about $5b in the next decade in Auckland, Tauranga and Wellington.
Schemes are:
- Kupenga, Pt England, 111 units completed, occupied;
- Waitangi Rd, Onehunga, 48 units completed, occupied;
- 6 Range View Rd, Ōwairaka, 51 units under construction, due to be completed by May;
- 80 Mt Wellington Hwy, 297 units under construction, called Reiputa, completion due next December;
- 130 Ascot Ave, Ellerslie, 336 units planned, resource consent application lodged, construction due to start later this year; and
- 10 Morningside Drive, 256 units, masterplanning under way, construction due to start soon.
Guess what Brealey’s boat is called?
Anne Gibson has been the Herald’s property editor for 24 years, has won many awards, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.
