Goodman Property Trust is building a new NZ Post parcel handling building in plans for 13.1.ha of land previously owned by Foodstuffs North Island. Video / Brett Phibbs
"A lot of market feedback was that we were mad at the time," said the chief of a new $250 million logistics/warehouse centre in Puketāpapa/Mt Roskill.
Goodman Property Trust's John Dakin was referring to 2018 market opinion about the Trust paying what was seen at the time as the extremelypricey $93 million for the 13.1ha site at the end of Roma St.
Turned out, Goodman wasn't so mad after all.
But this story starts back earlier last century.
For decades, Foodstuffs North Island's headquarters stood at 58-60 Roma Rd, around 35,000sq m of building covering less than 30 per cent of the site. But last year Foodstuffs shifted to rented premises at the airport.
Four years ago, Goodman bought the big site. That was before Covid hit and the Trust paid what people at the time said was well over the odds, Dakin recalls.
What those sceptics didn't factor in was the growth in online shopping about to hit during the pandemic.
Ground works on the $250m Roma Rd Estate by Goodman. Photo / Brett Phibbs
"We bought the site pre-pandemic but we were really confident at the time that these sorts of sites around the world are incredibly valuable for distribution," Dakin said standing above the platform of NZ Post's planned new 1.7ha parcel handling building.
"What's happened was that the redevelopment has been a lot quicker than we anticipated. We had a 10-year horizon. But the pandemic accelerating e-commerce and supply chain issues has led to greater demand for warehousing and has really accelerated our plans for not just this site but for others as well."
Goodman initially planned to keep and lease the old Foodstuffs buildings.
Plans for the site where four buildings are envisaged. Photo / supplied
But it soon became apparent that demand was strong due to people being at home and ordering goods online.
Distinctive towering pine trees which once stood there were so visible from the southwestern motorway/State Highway 20 linking Waterview to the airport. They've been felled.
Around 90 per cent of the existing buildings were recycled although asbestos was more extensive than initially thought. Concrete and bluestone volcanic rock was either crushed for re-use or sold. Only around 10 per cent of materials in the old Foodstuffs building were dumped. All up, 6370 tonnes of demolition material was recovered and diverted from landfills.
Where the new estate sits within the wider Auckland land mass. Photo / Goodman Property Trust
"Replacing or repurposing obsolete buildings and remediating contaminated sites is an important part of our development strategy. It improves the quality and performance of existing building stock without consuming additional land, a finite resource in a growing city," Dakin said.
Mike Gimblett, Goodman development general manager, said a new road would be built through the site as an extension of where Roma Rd runs now so although it would be private, it would appear as an extension of Roma Rd.
A new roundabout would allow easy traffic access to four large new warehouses and distribution buildings.
This is the style of warehouse/logistics building planned for the site. Photo / supplied
Around 7000 native trees would be planted for carbon neutrality and to encourage birdlife, Gimblett said.
The NZ Post building would have around 450 rooftop solar panels and 80,000l of water tanks for greywater recycling.
The population within a 20-minute delivery truck radius is estimated to be around 700,000 people and the wider consumer catchment has purchasing power around $23b, Goodman says.
CBD (right) - aerial of Goodman's 13.1ha site where the first building is for NZ Post. Photo / Brett Phibbs
"New Zealand consumers have embraced online shopping, making around $7.7b of purchases in 2021, an increase of over 30 per cent from a year earlier. The increasing penetration of e-commerce follows offshore trends in markets such as Britain, the United States and China where online shopping can make up more than 20 per cent of all retail sales," Goodman estimates.
The new warehouse/logistics hub is targeting a 5 green star rating from the Green Building Council, aiming to be carbon neutral.
Goodman plans energy-efficient designs like automated LED lighting, electrical sub-metering for performance monitoring and measurement, electric vehicle charging stations, rooftop solar energy, HVAC systems that use low emission refrigerants, low-emission double glazing to cut noise and regulate heat, low-flow water fittings, rainwater harvesting, low volatile organic compound materials and finishes, bike racks and the extensive landscaping.
So what does Dakin think all that means?
Maybe the Trust wasn't so mad after all to pay that $93m for the site.
Goodman is trading around $2.21, down 6 per cent annually, giving it a market cap of $3b which makes it one of New Zealand's largest listed property investors.
