KEY POINTS:
An unusual twist of fate has seen the three property firms involved in building a big Auckland office building return to the block three decades later.
Downtown House, a former Air New Zealand staff hub fronting Queen Elizabeth II Square opposite the old Central Post Office, has been stripped back to its bones and now the ugly duckling is about to become a swan.
As fate would have it, the three firms which designed, built and once owned this monument to 1970s taste are all back on the site again. But this time around, they have a new vision for the building at the foot of Queen St as they give the structure a second chance.
Last century, major office block investor AMP, commercial building firm Fletcher Construction and award-winning architects Peddle Thorpe were all involved with Downtown House, the office block at the foot of Queen St. In the 1970s, Peddle Thorp designed it, Fletcher Mainline built it and AMP owned it.
More than 30 years later, the triumvirate is back and again working together on the same building at the intersection of Queen and Customs Sts beside Westfield Downtown.
All three firms are working on the city's biggest make-over as the block is refurbished and expanded.
Last year, NZX-listed AMP NZ Office Trust paid owners Ross and Dallas Pendergrast $33 million for the building. Then, the trust started on a $70 million-$80 million renovation, commissioning architects Brian Aitken and Wade Jennings of Peddle Thorp to design redevelopment which would pull it out of its time warp.
Jennings, the project architect, said his vision for the finished project was inspirational.
"Everything about this building excites the senses - its scale, its environmental sensitivity, its flexibility, its liveability and its lightness of being," Jennings said.
Air New Zealand shifted staff out of the block and into its new Fanshawe St headquarters and the North Shore. Where other owners would see the loss of a cornerstone tenant as a disaster, ANZO saw a gift: buildings are easier to alter empty, especially given the scale of work trust chief executive Rob Lang had in mind.
Lang, based in Wellington, had been hunting for a well-build block in a good location so he could renovate and add to the trust's $1.4 billion portfolio. Having applied this makeover formula to 1 and 3 The Terrace in Wellington, he believed the method would work well in Auckland. He saw Downtown House as having the perfect combination of factors he needed.
Stuart West, Fletcher's project manager, began planning the work last winter so that by spring he could move his workforce onto the site, erecting hoardings and stripping the building back to its concrete floors and slab walls. The spandrel panel cladding, which reduced good city views into parsimonious half-frame slots, were stripped off and given to Winstones to crush for aggregate.
Then, a skeletal dinosaur-like structure emerged in the middle of the city, looking for all the world like a half-built new building.
Now, Fletcher has begun to re-build, installing a full-height double-glazed curtain wall with a green tint. The full-height windows aim to create as little separation between the outside and inside worlds as possible.
The building will have lots of environmentally friendly aspects. A 40,000 litre underground water tank is being installed for rainwater harvesting. The tanks will hold 'grey' water which will then be recycled for toilet flushing, reducing water run-off and wastage from the building. A low-energy chilled beam air-conditioning system is being installed for maximum efficiency. Full-height glass walls will allow maximum natural light and cut power bills. The reduction in CO2 emissions from the building's changes will be the equivalent of taking 300 cars off the road and the building will use 60 per cent less water than a building of equivalent size and use. Recycling building materials will result in a 69 per cent construction waste cut compared to conventional building jobs.
"Almost all the existing sub-structure of the previous building has been retained in developing 21 Queen St and this is recycling on a grand scale, a sign of the significance the environment played in every aspect of this building. Our aim is for 21 Queen St to become the first building in Auckland to be completed to the Green Building Council's 5-star green star certified rating standard," ANZO says.
Once finished, 21 Queen St will be one of the city's few double-glazed commercial buildings.
Hamish McCulloch, the trust's Auckland asset manager, said blocks with this glass treatment were relatively rare, a point confirmed by Angus McNaughton of Kiwi Income Property Trust who owns Vero tower on Shortland St and National Bank twin-towers on Queen St which he said were some of the few highrises with the same glazing.
To make more money out of the building, ANZO decided to add an extra six levels, strengthened via foundations driven around the central core lift, stairway and bathrooms. Of those six floors, two will be plant rooms and four will be offices.
When the job is finished next year, AMP expects the tower to be worth more than $117 million and McCulloch said it would be the only new premium office space available to the market before the end of this decade. A-grade towers like Vero and PricewaterhouseCoopers charge about $650/sq m rent annually. AMP could get $500/sq m for 21 Queen St which will be able to accommodate about 1000 people. The block generated rent of just $2.85 million when Air NZ were tenants. When it offers an enlargened 14,700sq m, ANZO might get more than $7 million annually for the block, as well as pocketing the one-off development margin and potentially handsome capital gain for its portfolio. Another plus, McCulloch said, was the block's position with northern views of Rangitoto, west to the Viaduct Basin and Harbour Bridge and south clear up Queen St.
ANZO expects to make a lot of money out of the building. Aucklanders are watching the transformation as an unpleasant-looking structure in the middle of their city is being turned into a thing of beauty.
Paradoxically, a shunned building which squatted awkwardly on its site turns out to have the best bones and be in the best position in the city. Its metamorphosis is bound to win awards and accolades for ANZO in years to come.
JUST THE JOB
* 1800 tonnes of concrete stripped off facade
* 6 new levels being added at the top
* 60km of electric cable being installed
* 30km of pipe work will run through walls
* 40,000-litre water tank to hold rainwater
* 7500sq m of glass will cover the front
* 5-star environmental green rating to come
