Latest series on the ‘hell’ of apartment living screens on Sky, ‘magic’ behind road fix studied, Chinese developers leaving, half-year results from SkyCity and Fletcher Building, Precinct with Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei, sewer upgrade support - all this in Property Insider today.
Around $15 million has been spent on an ex-office building converted into apartments on Auckland’s western CBD fringe, according to a documentary screened on the weekend.
The first in two three-part series A Living Hell: Apartment Disasters screened on Sunday night on Sky Open, the new name for Prime TV. Perhaps most upsetting was The Ridge apartments, a building with fire-rating and leak problems, floors stripped back, facing an uncertain future.
The next episodes are this and next Sunday night and it is a sobering yet compelling watch.
John Gray and Roger Levie of the Home Owners and Buyers Association continue their investigations into the appalling state of many apartment buildings. This series features blocks in Auckland, Tauranga, Wellington and Queenstown.
Two Auckland blocks were a big focus in Sunday night’s episode: the decrepit empty stripped-out The Ridge apartments in the College Hill area and Day St’s Avoka apartments where people are living with defects.
The Ridge is at 23 Hargreaves St off College Hill Rd, near Leighs Construction Auckland offices and the Auckland Central Police Station.
A group of skateboarders was shown trying to gain entry to The Ridge - at the very time of filming. No one lives there but filming showed water coming into the building.
Unit owner, Mike Downard of Taupo, told how he had bought a unit there for his university-attending children when the offspring moved to Auckland. He wept inside the abandoned block.
In 2019, the Herald featured Scott Ruddock and other tenants being given seven days to leave.
The second season of this watchable yet highly disturbing series is also airing on Neon and SkyGo.
What dastardly trickery is this? A challenging highway taken out by devastating floods yet fixed early?
What can we learn from the big pre-Christmas Coromandel road repair which arrived so early that it inspired locals to party in the street?
Infrastructure New Zealand and consultants RCP have produced a report about State Highway 25A’s slip remediation. That will be out later this month and it could act as a blueprint for other jobs.
The vital highway link reopened to holiday traffic in time for Christmas, three months early, on December 20, marking the end of a difficult period for Coromandel residents after the section of road disappeared in a landslip last January during the summer storms.
“New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi and partners from across the infrastructure industry worked supremely well together to deliver a solution much faster than normal to replace Taparahi Bridge on State Highway 25A in the Coromandel,” Infrastructure NZ said.
Lessons about the speed and efficiency of that job could help inform the new Government’s approach to improving planning, consenting and procurement systems, it said.
So free events are on this month in Tauranga and Auckland for Infrastructure NZ members. Panel discussions will be held on how the job’s success could spur other projects on.
The Tauranga event is on February 22, 5pm-7pm at Waters Edge, Memorial Park.
The Auckland event is on February 28, same time, at the offices of RCP in Hargreaves St, Freemans Bay.
One Auckland-based construction chief has confirmed several Chinese developers here are putting their projects on hold while the high interest rates and ever-rising construction costs bite.
“Labour’s Overseas Investment Act rules didn’t help,” he said referring to the 2018 law revision which banned foreigners from buying our homes, although exemptions can be granted for foreigners to buy on large-scale apartments.
“There’ll be a six-month hangover from last year but with Christmas over, a change in Government, interest rates have plateaued and are dropping, Construction costs have come down a lot, shipping and material constraints have gone, there’s now a lot more optimism out there,” said the big-time builder.
His business expects to sign around a number of new building projects shortly “and we are very optimistic about a number of them being signed up before Santa drops down the chimney again this year - whoop whoop!”
SkyCity Entertainment Group shares rose from $1.81 mid-January to $2.01 later last week.
The company has a $1.5b market capitalisation and will release its half-year result to December 31 on February 22.
Two days before Christmas, it revised its earnings downwards, citing lower revenue from electronic gaming machines, Adelaide being weaker and a delay in settlement of its car park concession agreement. It expects Ebitda to be $290m to $310m for the full year to June 30, 2024.
The company will soon say who will replace chief executive Michael Ahearne, returning to Ireland and leaving at the end of next month.
Not a lot of time. Get a wriggle on.
Fletcher Building’s half-year result to December 31, 2023, is due out next Wednesday, February 14. We might hear more on the Perth pipe problem, having heard in advance yesterday on a further $165m hit to accounts from the NZ International Convention Centre.
Certainly, the opening of the new SkyCity Horizon Hotel on Hobson St is some good news, although slightly delayed. SkyCity chief operating officer Cullum Mallett said towards the end of last year the hotel would be opening on March 1. That has been slightly delayed, perhaps till the end of next month now but wait and see.
Ross Taylor took the helm in difficult circumstances. Seven years ago, then-chairman Sir Ralph Norris announced the Aussie engineer was taking the helm in Penrose. Taylor, with a super dry wit and a somewhat self-deprecatory personal style, steered the good ship Fletcher out of highrise construction and into more stable territory.
House building, manufacturing and distribution and fewer high-risk jobs are what’s coming out of Penrose these days - along with a lot of Gib board from the new Tauranga factory.
Taylor started on November 22, 2017.
For a time, some insiders cited chief financial officer Bevan McKenzie as a potential successor, along with various divisional chiefs.
But nothing has been said lately.
Talking of long-serving chief executives, last week saw the opening of the new InterContinental Auckland on Quay St, or as owner Precinct Properties prefers to call it - One Queen.
Precinct chief executive Scott Pritchard and Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei’s Ngarimu Blair were chatting after the ribbon was cut.
Pritchard has been CEO since 2010, so it is now an impressive 14 years in that top job. The keen surfer has changed Auckland’s skyline in his role, having developed the $1 billion Commercial Bay, its crowning glory that new hotel and soon Deloitte’s move into the levels above it.
Last July 25, Ngati Whātua Ōrākei blessed One Queen and people were asked to observe a minute’s silence to remember the men who lost their lives in the shooting tragedy.
Last August 15, Precinct said it had formed a joint venture with Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei to invest in the regeneration of the Te Tōangaroa precinct at Quay Park where tangata whenua have around 20ha of land which it leases. Precinct bought a 56 per cent stake in two office blocks: 8 Tangihua St and 30 Mahuhu Cres.
But the bigger deal between the two was announced last December 3, when the pair struck a conditional agreement to buy the Downtown Car Park from Eke Panuku Development Auckland.
David Chaston of interest.co.nz is one of the few locals who support Watercare Services’ Herne Bay sewer upgrade.
“Everyone’s keen to have a well‐functioning sewer system and cleaner harbour, and a temporary use of the Salisbury Reserve to keep this important project on track is a sensible solution. Alternative options will only delay and slow things down, something our neighbourhood doesn’t need,” he told Auckland Council of the proposal in his supportive submission.
“Push ahead,” Chaston encouraged the authority.
Many locals have opposed it, particularly Watercare wanting to take most of Salisbury Reserve for 22 months.
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.
Some people without existing consent won’t get a wastewater connection for years.