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A new motorway link through a $1 billion Auckland development site will provide a boost for a new industrial estate and relieve traffic congestion in Auckland's southeastern suburbs.
Highbrook Drive, a 2.5km four-lane road and bridge through Highbrook Business Park on the Waiouru Peninsula, will allow South Auckland traffic to join the Southern Motorway at a new interchange in the Otahuhu/East Tamaki area.
The road, due to be opened by Transit in April, hugs the Tamaki River and runs through the 193ha Highbrook, a New Zealand and Australian joint venture transforming the old Ra Ora horse stud farm into Australasia's largest new industrial estate.
Transit has sealed and completed the two lanes heading east, has almost finished the bridge across the Tamaki Estuary and has just to apply the final layers of seal to the lanes heading west.
The new road is accessed from Ti Rakau Drive and runs off Harris Rd, starting by Highbrook's entrance where Exel is headquartered, opposite Fisher & Paykel Healthcare's offices.
The road is estimated to cut up to 15 minute of travel time for commuters joining the Southern Motorway in the East Tamaki area.
Up to 35,950 cars are expected to use the road, streaming to the Southern Motorway from Dannemora, Botany Downs and Howick.
Transit said Highbrook Drive would relieve congestion, particularly in fast-growing areas such as Botany Town Centre.
"The East Tamaki Connection is a new development in South Auckland designed to improve access to the Southern Motorway for the rapidly growing area. The project will give improved traffic movement from the industrial and commercial sectors in the East Tamaki and Otahuhu areas," Transit said of the $66 million project, which it started in 2004.
Development work is well under way at Highbrook, 25 per cent owned by the estate of Auckland industrialist Sir Woolf Fisher and 75 per cent owned by ASX-listed Macquarie Goodman Group, which manages and owns a stake in NZX-listed Macquarie Goodman Property Trust.
John Dakin, who heads the trust, said that just off the new road the joint venture is developing 10 new buildings, worth around $150 million.
Eight are under way: New Zealand Post's new building, the expansion of the existing DHL/Exel building, new premises for BMW, Cottonsoft and Big Chill and three sets of multi-unit developments - Crossing Offices, Highbrook units and Kerwyn Ave units.
The other two developments will be announced soon.
Dakin said work was running well in advance of plans made when the trust first bought into the site.
"We had planned to start developing the northern end of Highbrook in year six but demand has meant we're starting that now in year three."
Warehouse space of 10,000sq m to 40,000sq m was being leased for $90 to $95 a square metre. Adjoining office areas were going for $180 to $200 a square metre. Small units of 1000sq m to 2000sq m were being let at $105 a square metre for warehouse space and $200 to $210 for office areas, Dakin said.
The trust's involvement in Highbrook has not pleased everyone, mainly because manager Macquarie Goodman Group bought into the site and is selling buildings to the trust once they are finished.
Last year financial analysts complained the Australian group was offloading its development properties in New Zealand at the peak of the market and keeping lucrative development profits for itself.
The group is related to the trust because it employs its manager and holds a cornerstone stake in it.
The analysts complained that the group was getting development margins which the New Zealand trust was missing out on.
The group sought trust unitholder approval last year to sell properties valued at $200 million to the trust, including the first stage of Highbrook.
Many of those properties had either just been finished or were about to be completed, meaning the lucrative development margins would flow to the Australian group, not the New Zealand trust and its unit-holders.
But the group defended the arrangement by saying the trust was not big enough to be exposed to high levels of development risk and did not have the funds for this.
David van Aanholt, Macquarie Goodman's chief operating officer from Australia, said last year the group had made development margins of about $8 million on the properties it was selling to the trust and stood to make a further $100 million as margins on Highbrook.
Highbrook Park
* A 193ha block; 107ha to be developed.
* About 225,000 people live within a 10-minute radius.
* Fifteen minutes from Auckland's CBD, with a new road due to open in April.
* Will have 550,000sq m of industrial and office space.
