Heritage touch gives edge to Britomart

A large chunk of the Auckland central business district is to become a major new retail, office and residential development - but most of the buildings in the project already exist.

The $350 million Britomart development has been signed off by the Auckland City Council, proud that the project includes the restoration of at least 17 buildings.

The council boasts that the work will be New Zealand's largest heritage restoration project.

The beauty of the low-rise, heritage-based project, say its backers, is that it will provide new space in old buildings.

Unlike elsewhere in the city where multi-level blocks go up with no relationship to their location, the 17 heritage buildings in the precinct have a distinct link to the history of the Auckland waterfront.

The precinct - named after HMS Britomart which brought Captain William Hobson to Auckland on September 18, 1840 - will have its own ready-made character based on 100 years of the area's use.

Development of the old Britomart Pt area, where a pa once overlooked the Waitemata Harbour, began in the 1880s as the old Auckland Harbour Board leased properties reclaimed from the harbour.

Most of the buildings were warehouses for importers and exporters, including some prominent names in the early commercial life of the city.

Development continued after an economic slump in the late 1880s.

Typically for Auckland, uses of the buildings changed over the years so that space meant for kauri gum merchants, publishers, saddlers, shipping agents and engineers took on new tenants as decades passed.

And many were constructed when building technology was on the brink of changing from timber to the reinforced concrete technology used in Chicago skyscrapers.

The buildings came under threat in the 1930s when buses replaced trains at the site.

The old Auckland Harbour Board once called the heritage buildings in Quay St, including the Northern Steamship Co, the Union Fish Co and the wharf police building, the most unlovely and ugly in Auckland.

More threats arose to some of the buildings as a result of earlier Britomart redevelopment proposals.

As part of the coming redevelopment public open spaces will be developed, along with six new buildings. The now tacky area will become home to cafes and other eating and drinking venues as well as shops, apartments and offices, with the aim of injecting vibrancy into the area.

The city council owns all the buildings and land in the 5.2ha precinct but the Bluewater Consortium will buy some buildings and lease others as part of its $350 million plan.