KEY POINTS:
Sylvia Park will open 750 new carparks before Christmas, a 23 per cent increase in vehicle spaces at the giant Mt Wellington shopping centre.
Chris Gudgeon, chief executive of Kiwi Income Property Trust's manager, said demand from pre-Christmas trading and the need to expand parking for future commercial development prompted the building work.
A two-level parking building was already on the site near the cinemas, he said.
Andrew Buckingham, Sylvia Park project director at Kiwi Property Management, said Brookfield Multiplex had added a further four levels and the six-level building would open around the second week of December.
Buckingham said the existing parking building was built as two levels but with the ability to take another four levels.
The $14 million extensions will be ready just in time for an expected pre-Christmas shopping rush, he said.
The trust plans to build a series of office blocks around Sylvia Park and to meet the terms of its resource consent, needs more parking on the site.
Buckingham has just completed a tour of 80 shopping centres during three weeks, travelling through Asia, the Middle East and the United States to look at retailing trends.
Gudgeon said carparking spaces were always available but some shoppers had problems finding them.
"There may be a perception that parking on the weekends is not as easy as it could be. Carparking gets full but it's more about ease of access," Gudgeon said.
A new road has also been created to bring traffic into the park on a northern access route. The new road is off Lynton Rd which runs off Waipuna Rd. Gudgeon said five access points were now available to shoppers driving to the centre which has a sales turnover of more than $350 million annually.
In October, the shopping centre won a Gold Award for Development and Design in the Asia Shopping Centre Awards. Buckingham went to Macau to receive the prize, which makes Sylvia Park a finalist for the International Council of Shopping Centres' "best of the best" awards to be held in Las Vegas in May.
However, Kiwi Property Management did not announce that honour until last Thursday, a day after unveiling the first loss in the trust's history.
The trust's property portfolio was devalued from $2.09 billion in March to $2.05 billion in September. The trust also made a net after-tax loss of $31.3 million in the September half-year, the first time since it floated in 1993 that it had dipped into the red, according to a senior executive there. Management emphasised that the loss was forced by an unrealised devaluation of the portfolio by $52 million and said the trust was still in good shape.
SYLVIA PARK
* 24ha site at Mt Wellington
* 206 shops worth $470 million
* 12 million shoppers annually
* 4000 carparks before Christmas
* 700m interior walkway end-to-end
